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ANNALS 

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ANNALS 



OF THE 



HARVARD CLASS OF 1852 



BY 

GRACE WILLIAMSON EDES 



CAMBRIDGE 

PRIVATELY PRINTED 

1922 



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THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A. 



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In Memoriam 
GUILIELMI CROSS WILLIAMSON 



Dignum laude virum Musa vetat mori: 
Caelo Musa beat. 



PREFACE 

TO the lot of a daughter of the Class of 1852 has it fallen 
to look over the mementoes preserved for more than 
fifty years by one of its members. Old programmes, 
wine-stained dinner and supper menus, sketches of the College 
life of the period, — like ashes of roses they yet give forth 
faint fragrance of a golden age of youth and mirth. As she 
has turned the discolored pages, read the letters full of spirited 
detail of College pranks and revels, but with an undertone 
always of earnest purpose, the young forms have risen before 
her, the echoes of the old songs have sounded once more, 
bringing with them an irresistible desire to preserve some 
record of the doings of those long-past days. 

With this purpose she wrote to Mr. Joseph H. Choate, who 
approved the plan and lent her many letters written to him- 
self by the members of the Class shortly after leaving college. 
Judge Choate also, as may be seen by those who read, con- 
tributed interesting anecdotes and explanations; and Mrs. 
Addison Brown has given great help by kindly copying, from 
an autobiographical fragment, Judge Brown's recollections of 
his Harvard days. But it is to Dr. Henry K. Oliver that the 
book owes most, and the debt is in truth inestimable. His 
wonderful memory was as accurate as it was retentive, and he 
was able therefore to explain the references in songs and poems, 
and to recall many forgotten events as well as ways and cus- 
toms which have long since fallen into desuetude, and any 
interest that may attach to the Class Annals is largely due to 
him. 

All those connected with the members of the Class have 
been most kind in their interest and help, as have been Mr. 
George Parker Winship, Librarian of the Harry Elkins Widener 
Collection, Mr. Nicholas Field, President of the Mississippi 
Harvard Club, and Mr. Luther Atwood of Lynn, Massachu- 
setts, through whose aid it has been possible to trace several 
missing men. Mr. Clarence S. Brigham of the American 
Antiquarian Society of Worcester, and the Librarian of the 

vii 



Preface 

Otis Library at Norwich, Connecticut, have sent valuable 
newspaper extracts which have been of great assistance; and 
thanks are due also to Miss Helen M. Beale, Acting Librarian 
of Adelbert College, Western Reserve University, the Hon. 
Edward Osgood Brown of Chicago, and Dr. James Kendall 
Hosmer of Minneapolis, who have given information about 
members of the Class. The unfailing kindness and aid of 
Mr. Julius Herbert Tuttle, Librarian of the Massachusetts 
Historical Society, have been of inestimable value in solving 
many difficult questions. Especial appreciation should be 
expressed of the aid rendered by Miss Sawin and her assist- 
ants at the Harvard Quinquennial Office during the years the 
book was in progress, which has contributed to its complete- 
ness and accuracy. Gratitude is felt also to Mr. Albert 
Matthews for his untiring help, and most of all to the husband 
of the annalist, Henry Herbert Edes, to whose meticulous care 
in the reading of the proof and constant encouragement under 
the many difficulties which have arisen, in addition to the in- 
centive of his interest, the volume is indebted for anything of 
value that it may hold. 

The objection may be made by any who read the sketches 
of the members of the Class that they are of too eulogistic a 
nature. The answer to the criticism must be that the writer 
has tried to portray them in the spirit of brotherly love, which 
was so striking a feature of the Class of 1852, whose feeling 
toward one another might be best expressed in an adaptation 
of Prior's lines — 

Be to his virtues very kind; 
Be to his faults a little blind. 

G. W. E. 

July, 1922. 



Vlll 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Page 

Dedication v 

Preface vii 

List of Illustrations xi 

Names of Persons who Have Contributed to Publication 

of this Volume xv 

Members of the Class i 

Temporary Members of the Class 2 

Class Secretaries 3 

Sketches of Members of the Class 5 

Sketches of Temporary Members of the Class .... 233 

The Faculty and Parietal Committee 250- 

The Class as Undergraduates 252 

Men who Joined the Class after the Freshman Year 259 
Deturs, Prizes, Exhibitions, and Mock Parts: 

Deturs 260 

Prizes 260 

Exhibitions 261 

Mock Parts 266 

Class Day: 

Class Meeting 271 

Order of Exercises 274 

Ode . 274 

Oration 276 

Poem 295 

As Told, by the Class Secretary 305 

Commencement : 

Invitations 311 

Programme 312 

Order of Exercises 315 

Annals of the Class; 

Faculty 321 

The Class 326 

Ode 333 

Chronological List of the Class 339 

Clergymen 341 

Lawyers 341 

Physicians 341 

ix 



Table of Contents 

Page 
Annals of the Class {continued) : 

Members who Changed their Names 342 

Harvard Sons of Harvard Fathers 342 

Harvard Fathers of Harvard Sons 343 

Members who Served in the Civil War 345 

College Societies: 

Alpha Delta Phi 346 

Chi Phi Fraternity 346 

Harvard Boat Club 347 

Harvard Lodge of the Independent Order of Odd 

Fellows 348 

Harvard Natural History Society 367 

Hasty Pudding Club 368 

Iadma 369 

Institute of 1770 384 

Knights' Punch Bowl 392 

Phi Beta Kappa 395 

Pierian Sodality 397 

Pi Eta 398 

Psi Upsilon 398 

Porcellian Club 399 

Rumford Society 400 

The '52 Dining Club 401 

Water Celebration, October 25, 1846 402 

Railroad Jubilee, September 17, 185 i 405 

Class Anniversaries 406 

Inauguration of President Sparks 422 

A Scintilla 427 

Class Fund 428 

Memorial Hall Fund 428 

Endowments 428 

Transmittendum 430 

Description of Frontispiece 432 

Index 433 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Page 
Harvard College in 1849 Frontispiece 

Portraits of Members of the Class: 1 
Plate I: 

Horatio Alger 6 

Elbert Ellery Anderson 6 

John Ellis Blake 6 

Charles Thomas Bonney 6 

Caleb Davis Bradlee 6 

Plate II: 

Peter Chardon Brooks 26 

Addison Brown 26 

Henry William Brown 26 

Edward King Buttrick 26 

Charles Taylor Canfield 26 

Plate III: 

George Lovell Cary 40 

Reginald Heber Chase 40 

David Williams Cheever 40 

Joseph Hodges Choate 40 

William Gardner Choate 40 

Plate IV: 

Josiah Collins 62 

Alfred Wellington Cooke 62 

Horace Hopkins Coolidge 62 

John Colman Crowley 62 

Thomas James Curtis 62 

Plate V: 

Charles Francis Dana 72 

Henry Gardner Denny 72 

Henry Hill Downes 72 

Jonathan Dwight 72 

William Miller Este 72 

1 Portraits of three members are lacking: Howard Payson Arnold, John Sylvester 
Gardiner, and Jerome Bonaparte Kimball. 

xi 



List of Illustrations 

Plate VI: Page 

Edwin Hedge Fay 84 

George Huntington Fisher 84 

Levi Gray 84 

Augustus Goodwin Greenwood 84 

Edwin Smith Gregory 84 

Plate VII: 

Ephraim Whitman Gurney 92 

Samuel Foster Haven 92 

George Edward Head 92 

James Seneca Hill 92 

Francis William Hilliard 92 

Plate VIII: 

John Emery Hoar 102 

William Sturgis Hooper 102 

Francis Saltonstall Howe 102 

James Huntington 102 

Francis William Hurd 102 

Plate IX: 

Samuel Hutchins Hurd 112 

Benjamin Flint King 112 

William Duncan McKim 112 

Frederic Percival Leverett 112 

William Cole Leverett 112 

Plate X: 

Edward Horatio Neal 120 

George Walter Norris 120 

Henry Kemble Oliver 120 

Calvin Gates Page 120 

George Augustus Peabody 120 

Plate XI: 

John Taylor Perry 136 

William Henry Phipps 136 

Josiah Porter 136 

Edward Ellerton Pratt 136 

Samuel Miller Quincy 136 

Plate XII: 

Paul Joseph Revere 150 

Horace Richardson 150 

Edwin Aldrich Rodgers 150 

Knyvet Winthrop Sears 150 

Nathaniel Devereux Silsbee 150 

xii 



List of Illustrations 



Plate XIII: 

George Brimmer Sohier . 

Almon Spencer 

Joseph White Sprague 
Charles Ellery Stedman 
Austin Stickney . . . . 



Plate XIV: 

Elijah Swift 

Adam Wallace Thaxter . . 
James Bradley Thayer . . 

Gorham Thomas 

Samuel Lothrop Thorndike 

Plate XV: 

David Churchman Trimble 
Charles Wentworth Upham 
Charles Carroll Vinal . . 
John Singer Wallace . . . 
Darwin Erastus Ware . . 



Plate XVI: 

Robert Ware 

William Robert Ware 

William Henry Waring 

Andrew Washburn 

William Fiske Wheeler 

Plate XVII: 

Horatio Hancock Fiske Whittemore 

Sidney Willard 

Robert Mortimer Williams 

William Cross Williamson 

Chauncey Wright 

Sketches of Harvard Life, by Charles Ellery Stedman: 
Seniors after Class Day . 
Morning Devotions, No. i 
Morning Devotions, No. 2 
Morning Devotions, No. 3 
Morning Devotions, No. 4 
The Knights' Punch Bowl 



Page 
160 
160 
160 
160 
160 

174 
174 
174 
174 

174 

188 
188 
188 
188 
188 

200 
200 
200 
200 
200 

214 

214 
214 
214 
214 

272 
300 

3SO 
370 
392 



Xlll 



NAMES OF PERSONS WHO HAVE CONTRIBUTED TO 
THE PUBLICATION OF THIS VOLUME 

Mr. Peter Chauncey Anderson 

Mr. Peter Chardon Brooks 

Mrs. Addison Brown 

Mr. and Mrs. Heman Merrick Burr 

David Cheever, M.D. 

Mrs. Joseph Hodges Choate 

Miss Mabel Choate 

Mr. William Gardner Choate 

Mr. and Mrs. Henry Herbert Edes 

Henry Kemble Oliver, M.D. 

Mr. George Augustus Peabody 

Gen. Charles Lawrence Peirson 

Mrs. Knyvet Winthrop Sears 

Mr. Elijah Kent Swift 

Mrs. Nathaniel Thayer 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 

OF THE 

MEMBERS 



THE CLASS OF 1852 



Horatius Alger 
Elbertus Ellery Anderson 
Howard Payson Arnold 
Johannes Ellis Blake 
Carolus Thomas Bonney 
Caleb Davis Bradlee 
Petrus Chardon Brooks 
Addison Brown 
Henricus Guilielmus Brown 
Edvardus King Buttrick 
Carolus Taylor Canfield 
Georgius Lovell Cary 
Reginaldus Heber Chase 
David Williams Cheever 
Guilielmus Gardner Choate 
Josephus Hodges Choate 
Josias Collins 

Alfredus Wellington Cooke 
Horatius Hopkins Coolidge 
Johannes Colman Crowley 
Thomas Jacobus Curtis 
Carolus Franciscus Dana 
Henricus Gardner Denny 
Henricus Hill Downes 
Jonathan Dwight 
Guilielmus Miller Este 
Edvinus Hedge Fay 
Georgius Huntington Fisher 
Johannes Sylvester Gardiner 
Levi Gray 

Augustus Goodwin Greenwood 
Edvinus Smith Gregory 
Ephraimus Whitman Gurney 
Samuel Foster Haven 
Georgius Edvardus Head 
Jacobus Seneca Hill 
Franciscus Guilielmus Hilliard 
Johannes Emory Hoar 



Guilielmus Sturgis Hooper 
Franciscus Saltonstall Howe 
Jacobus Huntington 
Franciscus Guilielmus Hurd 
Samuel Hutchins Hurd 
Hieronymus Bonaparte Kimball 
Benjamin Flint King 
Fredericus Percival Leverett 
Guilielmus Cole Leverett 
Guilielmus Duncan McKim 
Edvardus Horatius Neal 
Georgius Walter Norris 
Henricus Kemble Oliver 
Calvinus Gates Page 
Georgius Augustus Peabody 
Johannes Taylor Perry 
Guilielmus Henricus Phipps 
Josias Porter 
Edvardus Ellerton Pratt 
Samuel Miller Quincy 
Paulus Josephus Revere 
Horatius Richardson 
Edvinus Aldrich Rodgers 
Knyvett Winthrop Sears 
Nathanael Devereux Silsbee 
Georgius Brimmer Sohier 
Almon Spencer 
Josephus White Sprague 
Carolus Ellery Stedman 
Austin Stickney 
Elija Swift 

Adamus Wallace Thaxter 
Jacobus Bradley Thayer 
Gorham Thomas 
Samuel Lothrop Thorndike 
David Churchman Trimble 
Carolus Wentworth Upham 
Carolus Carroll Vinal 



THE CLASS OF 1852 — Continued 



Johannes Singer Wallace 
Darwin Erastus Ware 
Guilielmus Robertus Ware 
Robertus Ware 
Guilielmus Henricus Waring 
Andreas Washburn 
Guilielmus Fiske Wheeler 



Horatius Hancock Fiske Whitte- 



more 



Sidney Willard 
Russell Mortimer Williams 
Guilielmus Cross Williamson 
Chauncey Wright 



TEMPORARY MEMBERS 



Coddington Billings Farnsworth 
Robertus Rollins Fowle 
Guilielmus Boynton Gale 
Johannes Harding 
Georgius Washington Horr 
Johannes Clark Howard 
Samuel Edvinus Ireson 
Samuel Pearse Jennison 
Ludovicus Ellis Josselyn 



Henricus Moore 
Thomas Jennifer Phillips 
Thomas Riggs 
Guignard Scott 
Carolus Henricus Stickney 
Henricus Stone 
Russell Sturgis 
Reuben Tower 



CLASS SECRETARIES 

Calvin Gates Page 
1852 to 1862 

Henry Gardner Denny 

1862 to 1907 

Samuel Lothrop Thorndike 
1907 to 191 1 

David Williams Cheever 
1911 to 1916 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 

HORATIO ALGER, JUNIOR 

"Nothing so difficult as the beginning" is the apt quotation 
from "Don Juan," with which Horatio Alger prefaces his 
short autobiographical sketch in the Class Book of the first 
twenty years of his life. He proceeds with a brief dissertation 
on the advantages and disadvantages of being the first scholar, 
alphabetically speaking, of his class, and although his rhetoric 
is in slightly pompous, schoolboy vein, it shows promise of his 
pleasant later style as a popular story writer. 

Horatio Alger, Jr., was born 13 January, 1832, in Chelsea, 
Massachusetts. His parents were Horatio and Olive Augusta 
(Fenno) Alger, his father graduating from Harvard College 
in the distinguished Class of 1825 and from the Harvard Divin- 
ity School in 1829. He was a Unitarian clergyman, and at 
the time of Horatio's birth was settled over the old church in 
the part of Chelsea which is now Revere, and is known as the 
First Unitarian Church of Revere. 

Horatio was a delicate boy, 1 and was not taught even the 
alphabet until he was six years old, but once started on the 
path of learning he made rapid progress and began to study 
Latin and algebra at the age of eight; for two years the greater 
part of his education was conducted at home and he browsed 
at will through the paternal library, his selection of books 
varying from Josephus's "History of the Jews" and works on 
theology to the "Arabian Nights Entertainment" and "Jack 
the Giant-Killer." He was sent to the Chelsea Grammar School 
when he was ten, and he gives a rather graphic picture of that 
seat of learning: 

I remember the schoolhouse, a square brick building, whose walls 
the storms of more than a century had beaten without producing any 
decided effect. Through panes encrusted with the accumulated dirt 

1 Alger was the smallest member of the Class, being but 5 feet, 2 inches in height, 
although perfectly formed and proportioned. 



Annals of the 

of many years, the light streamed in upon a scene which might have 
furnished employment for the pencil of Hogarth — 

The room displayed 

Long rows of desk and bench: the former stained 

And streaked with blots and trickles of dried ink, 

Lumbered with maps and slates, and well-thumbed books, 

And carved with rough initials. 

His studies at the grammar school were chiefly in English, and 
he remained there about eighteen months. When he was 
thirteen, his father left Chelsea and in December, 1844, the 
family moved to Marlborough. There, at the Gates Academy, 
of which Obadiah Wheelock Albee, a graduate of Brown Uni- 
versity in 1832 was then principal, Alger fitted for college. 
He finished his preparatory studies in 1847 and passed the 
intervening year before he entered in somewhat desultory 
reading and the study of modern languages. 

He and Denny underwent the ordeal of the entrance exam- 
inations together and Alger was selected to fill the office of 
President's Freshman. 1 Horatio received a Detur in his 
Sophomore year and in his Junior year took the first Bowdoin 
prize of forty dollars for a Dissertation on "Athens in the 
Time of Sophocles," the Bowdoin prize of fifteen dollars for a 
Greek prize composition, and again in the Senior year a prize 
for Greek composition. In the Exhibition of October, 1850, 
he gave a Greek version from "Lacy's Address in Behalf of the 
Greeks," and in the Exhibition of October, 1857, a Dissertation 
on "The Poetry of the Troubadors." He was Class Odist 
on Class Day, graduated eighth in his class, and was awarded 
the English Oration at Commencement. He was also a mem- 
ber of the Phi Beta Kappa and while in college belonged to 
the Institute of 1770, and the Natural History Society. 

During the ensuing year he lived with his parents at Marl- 
borough, teaching and writing. In the Boston Evening Tran- 
script of April, 1853, he published a short poem called "A 
Chant of Life" which shows deep religious feeling. He entered 
the Cambridge Divinity School in September, 1853, but left 
in the following November to become Assistant Editor of the 

1 "A member of the Freshman Class who performs the official errands of the Presi- 
dent, for which he receives the same compensation as the Parietal Freshman (i. e., 
about forty dollars per annum) and the rent of his room." (B. H. Hall, College Words 
and Customs, p. 212.) 

6 



PLATE I 








ALGER 
BONNEY 



BLAKE 



AN DERSON 
BRADLE E 



Harvard Class of 1852 

Boston Daily Advertiser, then under the management of the 
Messrs. Hale. He remained there until May; in June he 
assumed the position of teacher in E. W. Green's Boarding 
School for boys at East Greenwich, Rhode Island, and was 
there for nearly two years, until 1856, when he took charge 
of the Academy at Deerfield, Massachusetts, and was principal 
there during the summer; on leaving there he was a private 
tutor in Boston until September, 1857, when he once more 
entered the Divinity School, graduating in i860. In the 
meantime he had published two small volumes, one anony- 
mously, and had been a regular contributor to one weekly 
Boston paper for seven years and to another for nine months. 
His writings consisted chiefly of poems and stories which 
appeared in Harper's and Putnam's magazines, and in less 
well-known periodicals. , 

On the fifth of September, i860, with a cousin and his class- 
mate Vinal, Mr. Alger sailed for Europe. They took a hurried 
trip through Great Britain and Ireland, and passed five or six 
weeks on the Continent, and while there Mr. Alger was selected 
by the United States Government for the honor of bearing des- 
patches from Rome to Naples. During his absence he contrib- 
uted a series of European letters to the New York Daily Sun and 
sent several letters also to the Transcript and other newspapers. 

In April, 1 86 1, he came home, and thereafter preached 
regularly, supplying the pulpit at Dover until December, 
when he established himself at Cambridge as a private tutor, 
declining a call which he received, in 1862, to take charge of the 
Unitarian Society at Alton, Illinois. In December, 1864, he 
was settled over the Unitarian parish at Brewster, Massa- 
chusetts, and remained there for two years, but meanwhile 
he continued his literary work, writing stirring war songs 
which achieved popularity, and in 1864 publishing "Frank's 
Campaign," a book for boys, the first of the long series of 
juvenile stories which were to make him the idol of the boys 
of his day. "Frank's Campaign" was followed by "Paul 
Prescott's Charge," published like its predecessor by A. K. 
Loring of Boston. 

On resigning from his pastorate at Brewster, in 1866, Mr. 
Alger moved to New York. There he continued to fit young 
men for college, his chief interest lying always in the classical 
courses, and there he also became increasingly absorbed in 

7 



Annals of the 

studying the habits and customs of street Arabs. His genial 
manner, ready sympathy, and generous aid made him beloved 
by all the ragged urchins to whom he soon became a familiar 
and favorite figure, as he sauntered along the docks and 
through their especial haunts. One of his proteges once said, 
"Mr. Alger could raise a regiment of boys in New York alone 
who would fight for him to the death." As a result of his 
experiences among the young ragamuffins of the city, Mr. 
Alger, in 1869, brought out as a serial, in a magazine, The 
Student and Schoolmate, a story called "Ragged Dick." He 
had no expectation of publishing it in book form, but his vivid 
portrayal of life among the poor and friendless touched every 
heart and created a sensation throughout the entire country. 
A. K. Loring, the publisher, immediately made him a liberal 
offer for a series of six volumes on a similar subject, and the 
"Ragged Dick Series" was the result. The popularity of the 
books far exceeded all expectation, for the simple stories ap- 
pealed not to children only, but to the lovers of children as 
well. The "Tattered Tom Series" followed, then came 
"Brave and Bold," and after Alger's trip to the Pacific coast, 
in 1877, "The Pacific Series." 

He twice visited Colorado in search of material, and in 
addition to his many stories and two volumes of poetry he 
published biographies of Garfield, Webster and Lincoln. The 
"Life of Garfield" was written in thirteen days to satisfy the 
haste of the publishers. Mr. Casali, the editor of U Eco 
d' Italia, the organ of the New York Italians, asked Alger to 
write a story dealing with the nefarious traffic of the Italian 
padrones who were accustomed to lease boys from their parents 
in southern Italy and subject them to cruel treatment in their 
desire for gain. Mr. Casali having furnished him with full 
details Alger wrote "Phil the Fiddler," the tale of an Italian 
musician, and no greater proof of his power as a writer can be 
given than the fact that within six months from the time the 
book appeared, the cruelties of the padrones had been exposed 
by the leading New York papers and the system had been 
effectually abolished not only in New York but in all the large 
cities of America. 

The following poem was published in the Golden Argosy 
of October, 1885, and gives a pleasant touch of the heartfelt 
patriotism which was one of his chief characteristics : 

8 



Harvard Class of 1852 



The Primary School 

Again each morning as we pass 

The city's streets along, 
We'll hear the voices of the class 

Ring out the nation's song. 

The small boys' treble piping clear, 

The bigger boys' low growl, 
And from the boy who has no ear 

A weird discordant howl. 

With swelling hearts we hear them sing 

"My country, 't is of thee," 
From childish throats the anthem ring, 

"Sweet land of liberty!" 

Their little hearts aglow with pride, 

Each with exultant tongue 
Proclaims: "From every mountain side 

Let freedom's song be sung." 

Let him who'd criticize the time, 

Or scout the harmony, 
Betake him to some other clime, — 

No patriot is he! 

From scenes like these our grandeur springs, 

And we shall e'er be strong 
While o'er the land the schoolhouse rings 

Each day with Freedom's song. 

This is not the place for a criticism of Mr. Alger's literary 
ability, nor for questioning the permanence of his fame, but of 
the topographical value of his work as regards the New York 
of his day there can be no question. In the New York Tribune 
for 28 January, 1917, there appeared an interesting article 
wherein the author, Mr. Harold M. Harvey, touches gently 
and somewhat sadly on the fact that the Alger books which 
the former generation loved so well are no longer to be found 
in the library catalogues, and goes on to enumerate some of 
the true and graphic descriptions which Mr. Alger gave of 
New York landmarks, streets and houses as they existed in 



Annals of the 

1866 and for many years thereafter, in the days when "Ragged 
Dick" was considered an undying book, and its successors 
were at the height of their popularity. 

Alger revisited Europe in 1873, accompanied by his family, 
and in 1879 made the journey to the Pacific coast and the 
two later trips to Colorado, which have been already men- 
tioned. He never married, but although he was not to know 
the joy of fatherhood he found much happiness in the constant 
society of boys of all ages by whom he loved to be surrounded. 
Two, especially, he looked upon almost as his own, and a 
favorite niece he considered his adopted daughter. His gener- 
osity and kindness toward his young friends were untiring. In 
one of his letters we find a casual mention of some fortunate 
lad whom he was taking on a trip through the mountains and 
again we learn of two young fellows whom he had been estab- 
lishing in business in a Maine town. The genial warmhearted- 
ness which endeared him to his boyish friends made him 
equally beloved among his contemporaries, and his sunny 
nature and youthful sympathies kept him perennially young, 
so much so, indeed, that even members of his own family when 
asked his age were apt in good faith to deny him the full 
measure of his years, and to credit him with a decade less than 
was his by right. 

To homely loves and joys and friendships 
Thy genial nature ever clung; 
And so the shadow on the dial 
Ran back and left thee ever young. 

All hearts grew warmer in the presence 
Of one who, seeking not his own, 
Gave freely for the love of giving, 
Nor reaped for self the harvest sown. 

Thy greeting smile was pledge and prelude 
Of generous deeds and kindly words; 
In thy large heart were fair guest chambers, 
Open to sunrise and the birds. 

When Mr. Alger graduated from college at the mature age 
of twenty he wrote in the Class Book that his four years in 
Cambridge had been the happiest of his life. His letters to 

10 



Harvard Class of 1852 

the Class Secretary, Mr. Denny, show that his interest and 
affection for his classmates never waned. For the fortieth 
anniversary he wrote a poem which may be found in the 
account of the reunion of 1892. He was accustomed to pass 
three quarters of the year in New York, but during the sum- 
mer months he was usually to be found at the family home in 
South Natick. He had been in failing health for several years, 
but was able to continue his usual avocations until about eight- 
een months before his death. He died at the house of his sister, 
Mrs. O. A. Cheney, in South Natick, July eighteenth, 1899. 

ELBERT ELLERY ANDERSON 

Elbert Ellery Anderson was always known by his middle 
name, using only the initial of his first name. He was born in 
New York on the thirty-first of October, 1833, and was the son 
of Henry James Anderson (himself the son of Elbert Anderson) 
and of Fanny Da Ponte, the daughter of Lorenzo Da Ponte of 
Venice. At the time of Ellery Anderson's birth his father was 
Professor of Mathematics at Columbia College. He held the 
chair for twenty-five years, and was, moreover, one of the most 
distinguished scientists, educators and philanthropists of the 
last century in New York. For some months Ellery attended 
the grammar school of Professor Anthon, of Greek grammar 
fame, of whom he retained a lively recollection, as it was that 
pedagogue's pleasant custom at the end of the day to stalk up 
and down stroking his rattan tenderly, and jocosely introducing 
it to the boys as "the doctor," who would be most happy to 
make their acquaintance. 

Ellery's mother had been for some time in failing health, and 
in the hope of benefiting her, the family sailed for England in 
July, 1843, remaining there for a short time only. They settled 
for the winter in Paris, where Ellery was sent to an English 
school. A sorry time the poor lad had there, for all the little 
John Bulls seemed to consider the American Revolution as a 
direct insult to themselves, and eagerly seized the opportunity 
to vent their righteous indignation on a Yankee. The Anderson 
home was near the Tuileries. In January, A4rs. Anderson died, 
and in the following July, Ellery and his father left Paris, 
travelling through Belgium and Holland, and up the Rhine to 
Switzerland, where Ellery was left at Geneva at school. He 

11 



Annals of the 

was happy there, he writes in the Class Book, and the school 
was much like an American one. At times the boys, of whom 
seven were Americans, thought themselves ill-used, and two of 
them, having managed to collect ten dollars, two pistols that 
would not fire, one pair of thick-soled shoes and a few hard 
crackers, started for America, and had proceeded fifteen miles 
before they were captured and brought back. When Ellery was 
fourteen, he left school and accompanied his father to Mar- 
seilles, whence they took an extended tour through Europe, 
and crossing Hungary just as the war broke out there, saw 
Kossuth in the Assembly at Pesth. 

On his return to America, Anderson began to study Greek, 
and very suddenly decided to enter Harvard College, never 
having thought of doing so until a day or two before he applied 
for admission. He entered with the Sophomore class, and was 
the youngest member of the largest class which Harvard College 
had then known. At the Exhibition of May, 1851, he gave an 
English Metrical Version of Lamartine's "Bonaparte " ; in Octo- 
ber of the same year a Disquisition upon Geneva, and at Com- 
mencement a Disquisition on the " Dramatic Power of Mozart." 

On leaving college he studied law in New York, and in 1854 
opened an office with Francis S. Banks. 

He was married on the twelfth of October, 1859, to Augusta 
Chauncey, daughter of the Reverend Peter Schermerhorn 
Chauncey of New York. 

In 1862, in response to the call for militia regiments, which 
was made after General Banks's defeat in the Shenandoah 
Valley, Anderson went to the front as Major of the Twelfth 
New York State Militia. He was stationed at Harper's Ferry 
and was there captured by the Confederates under the com- 
mand of Stonewall Jackson just before the battle of Antietam. 

Anderson resumed his law practice on his return from the 
war; he was especially engaged in railway litigation and con- 
ducted the proceedings against Jay Gould and the Missouri, 
Kansas and Texas Railway companies for the recovery of 
interest on income bond coupons, obtaining a judgment of 
more than two million dollars. 

Mr. Anderson also became greatly interested in local politics, 
was a zealous Democrat, and was active in the movement 
which led to the overthrow of the Tweed Ring in 1871. He was 
one of the founders of the Bar Association, and served on several 

12 



Harvard Class of 1852 

of its most important committees. When Tammany Hall, in 
1879, withdrew seventy-two delegates from the State Conven- 
tion because of the opposition to the nomination of Lucius 
Robinson for Governor, Mr. Anderson was the only delegate to 
denounce the resolution approving of their course, and to with- 
draw from the organization. Together with William C. 
Whitney, Edward Cooper and Abram S. Hewitt he labored for 
the overthrow of boss rule and the formation of the County 
Democracy of New York. He devoted himself ardently to 
Tariff Reform also, and was a warm supporter of Cleveland, in 
later years being one of the first Democrats to repudiate the 
Bryan ticket and the Chicago platform. 

Always interested in public education, his service to the 
common school system of New York extended over a period 
of nearly twenty years, and in November, 1892, he was 
appointed by Mayor Strong a member of the Board of Educa- 
tion. He held the office for three years, resigning it on going to 
Europe for a long absence in 1899. Except in cases which gave 
him the opportunity to serve the public interest without 
pecuniary remuneration, he always declined office, but he held 
many public trusts, such as Rapid Transit Commissioner and 
Commissioner for taking land for the Elevated Railway and 
the Croton Aqueduct. In 1887, President Cleveland appointed 
him a Commissioner to investigate the Union Pacific Railway 
Company. 

Judge Choate 1 tells us that the scholarly tastes and habits 
acquired in his college days were 

maintained through life, and as he showed in his subsequent career, 
the training of his naturally strong mind and character came up to 
Milton's test of a "complete and generous education," — that which 
fits a man to perform justly, skilfully and magnanimously all the 
offices, both private and public, of peace and war. 

Mr. Anderson's accomplishment and tireless energy in whatso- 
ever his hand found to do were the more striking, because, as 
Judge Choate further says, although he was 

during many years a sufferer from periodical attacks of a painful 
disease, he never spared himself. Both in his professional and his 
public duties he labored on with courage and zeal against obstacles 
which would have deterred many men from effort. 

1 Memorial of Mr. Anderson, prepared for the Bar Association. 

13 



Annals of the 

Mr. Anderson was a director of the Central Branch Railway 
Company, and Montana Union Railway Company, a member 
of the Metropolitan Club, one of the founders of the Reform 
Club of which he was President, a member of the Democratic 
Club, University Club, Harvard Club and Whist Club, of 
the Bar Association and the American Museum of Natural 
History. 

In spite of the strength of his Democratic convictions, Mr. 
Anderson never allowed his political views to form any barrier 
to his friendships with those of another party. Frederick H. 
Man, Esquire, with whom he was associated in practice for 
nearly thirty years, has written me : 

My personal relations with him were at all times of the kindliest, and 
some idea of his personal characteristics may be derived from the 
fact that although we were of different politics, our discussions were 
never in the slightest degree acrimonious. 

Mr. Man dwells also on the kindness and tenderness of Mr. 
Anderson's home life, — his generous consideration for others, 
the confidence he inspired and the warmth of his friendships, 
and especially mentions the fact that although tenacious of an 
opinion once formed, he was always careful never to wound the 
feelings of those who disagreed with him, even when he was 
convinced that his own view was the only right one morally. 
Mr. Man closes his description of Mr. Anderson with a few 
words too expressive of the tenderness of their long friendship 
to be omitted: 

May I add that he was physically of an exceedingly pleasing char- 
acter, with a fine head of curly hair which clustered about features 
that made him what men call a handsome man. I can say he was not 
only handsome physically but morally. 

Anderson always retained his affection for his college affilia- 
tions. "I have become such an automatic family man and 
practising lawyer," he wrote to Denny in 1883, "that I think I 
could run on for a year without any exercise of volition what- 
ever. I am afraid I have no personal history," and his pres- 
ence at the Class Dinner that year was out of the question, 
but it was a matter of real regret to him that the necessity of 
his attendance at the Democratic National Convention, at 



Harvard Class of 1852 

which Cleveland was nominated, in 1892 precluded his attend- 
ing the fortieth anniversary of the Class. He was present at 
that of the succeeding year, however, and his enjoyment of the 
occasion was attested by the note which he wrote the Class 
Secretary: 

"I enclose my cheque for $5.60 for the dinner, which, I may 
say, was the largest dividend paid on the smallest investment 
of which I have ever heard or imagined"; and he enclosed the 
substituted four lines he had once prepared for the second 
stanza of Mrs. Howe's "Battle Hymn of the Republic" as 
he had always disliked her "awkward expression, 'dews and 
damps'": 

You can feel the mighty purpose of his arm that never tires; 
You can see it in the gleaming of a thousand camp-lit fires; 
You can hear it in the echoes of the soldiers' ringing choirs, 
As they go marching on. 

"Perhaps at some future Class Dinner you and I will lend 
our melodious voices to emphasize the proposed amend- 
ment." 

Mr. Anderson died on the twenty-fourth of February, 1903, 
in New York. He was survived by his wife, and by two sons, 
Peter Chauncey, born on March eighth, 1868, who became his 
partner in 1900, and Henry James Anderson, born on October 
thirteenth, 1870. 



HOWARD PAYSON ARNOLD 

"Now let us hear your pitiful story." 

"Story! God bless you! I have none to tell, sir." 

Thus Howard Arnold begins the tale of his life in the Class 
Book. The quotation from Canning's "Knifegrinder" evidently 
held especial significance to some of the classmates for it is 
quoted also in their letters. 

Howard Payson Arnold, son of Samuel Stillman and Sarah 
Louisa (Payson) Arnold was born in Charlestown, 12 October, 
1 83 1. During his college life he lived at home, as his father 
was then a resident of Cambridge; he received a Sophomore 
Detur and at Commencement he had a Disquisition, "Changes 
in the Character of Ulysses by the Greek Tragedians." 

After graduating from college he entered the office of Brooks 

15 



Annals of the 

and Ball, Counselors-at-Law in Boston, but remained there only 
a short time as he sailed for Europe in 1853. The following 
year, on his return, he again entered their office, and was 
admitted to the Suffolk Bar in 1856. 

His first experience was at Galesburg, Illinois, where he 
opened an office in partnership with E. W. Hazard in 1857. 
Evidently it was not to his taste, for he records in the Class 
Book, under date of February, 1858, "Left that Inferno of 
debauched communities called 'the West,' and returned to 
the Eye of America and opened an office for the dissemination 
of legal lore at No. 42 Court Street." 

His health failing, he again visited Europe in 1862. While 
there he published "European Mosaics," which was followed, 
on his return to America in 1868, by "The Great Exhibition." 
He also delivered a course of lectures before the Lowell Insti- 
tute on the same subject, making his home for a time with his 
father, who was living on Dana Hill in Cambridgeport. In 
July of 1867 he was elected a member of the Class Committee 
for three years in place of Charles Francis Dana. 

On the third of January, 1870, Mr. Arnold married Caroline 
Marie Crowninshield, daughter of Francis Welch, and widow 
of Edward Augustus Crowninshield, of the Class of 1836. In 
spite of some disparity of years the marriage was a happy one, 
and Mr. and Mrs. Arnold divided their time between their 
home in Boston and frequent trips to Europe. 

Mr. Arnold was much interested in Emmanuel Church, 
Boston, of which his wife had long been a communicant, and 
presented the Lectern in her memory; 1 it is copied from one 
now in the Church of St. Stephen the Martyr in the Parish of 
Westminster, London. He also gave to the church a copy of 
The Prayer Book of King Edward VII. This book was limited 
to four hundred copies, ten of which were on vellum, and of 
the ten special volumes the first was for His Majesty King 
Edward. A few additional copies were made, one for Mr. 
Arnold. 

Mrs. Arnold died 4 October, 1897, and after 1900 Mr. 
Arnold transferred his home to Pasadena, California, but he 
retained his interest in Boston and in its charities, to which 
he gave liberally. His tastes were essentially literary, and he 

1 A large stained glass window in memory of Mrs. Arnold was subsequently 
placed in the church. 

16 



Harvard Class of 1852 

frequently contributed to the Notes and Queries columns of 
the Boston Evening Transcript. In 1886 he wrote a "Life of 
Jonathan Mason Warren, M.D.," for private circulation, and 
in addition to "European Mosaics" and "The Great Exhibi- 
tion," already mentioned, published "Historic Side-Lights, " 
"Gleanings from Pontresina" and "The Boston Medal." 

He died at Pasadena, March third, 1910. He had no 
children. 



JOHN ELLIS BLAKE 

Blake prefaces his autobiographical record in the Class Book 
as follows: 

This, then, is the Class Book. Truly a rare specimen of curious 
art in binding, but, says the unappeasable Secretary, "you must 
write therein your history." "Verily, Friend Page," say I, "thou 
art a hard man. I am an unfruitful tree, but wait a season, and dig 
and trench me about, and I may bear some fruit peradventure of 
doggerels or some other mental grain." But he says "thou must 
do thine own digging, and after a little while I will return and see 
thee." 

Blake was born on the twentieth of October, 183 1, at Brattle- 
boro, Vermont, the only son of the Honorable John Rice and 
Helen (Ellis) Blake. "Having been," he says, "unfitted for 
college by divers and sundry pedagogues," he entered Williams 
in 1848, and after passing a year there, became a member of 
the Sophomore class at Harvard in 1849. His genial and de- 
lightful personality immediately rendered him popular, and 
he was made a member of the Porcellian Club, and the Hasty 
Pudding Club, taking part in the theatricals of the last-named 
society; he was blessed also with a pure tenor voice, and decided 
musical ability. 

Having studied medicine with Dr. J. Mason Warren, Blake 
received his M.D. diploma in 1855, and sailed for Europe with 
Dr. Warren's family. After passing a short time in England he 
established himself in the Latin Quarter of Paris, near the 
Medical School. Returning home in 1857, he decided to begin 
the practice of his profession in Boston. 

On January twenty-sixth, 1858, he was married at Saint 
Paul's Church, Boston, to Elizabeth Stone Gray, daughter of 

17 



Annals of the 

Samuel Calley Gray (H. C. 1811), and the young couple lived 
for a short time in Boston. 

An admirable opportunity soon offered for a practising 
physician in Middletown, Connecticut, of which Dr. Blake 
immediately availed himself, removing there in 1859. The 
place possessed an agreeable society, and was moreover fre- 
quented in the summer by a number of New York people. Dr. 
Blake's charm of manner and medical skill made him extremely 
popular, and the years which he passed there were successful 
and happy. Before leaving Boston Dr. Blake had lost one 
child, who died in infancy; two were born during his residence 
in Middletown, — Henry Sargent and Louise Dumeresq Blake. 
With them and his wife he sailed for Liverpool in 1866, and 
lived for two years chiefly in France, passing one winter in a 
small chalet in the pine forests of Arcachon on the coast near 
Bordeaux. They returned to Middletown in the autumn of 
1868, and there Dr. Blake's youngest child, John Rice Blake, 
was born in 1868; but their sojourn at their old home was short, 
for in the following May Dr. Blake moved to New York. 
There he soon established a flourishing practise, being especially 
skillful as a surgeon and possessing thorough knowledge of 
electricity and oxygen, the use of which was then almost un- 
known to the average physician. He died on the twenty- 
seventh of September, 1880. His widow survived him. 

His classmate and friend, Dr. Oliver, writes me that he 
had "an extraordinary aptitude for his profession; he was in 
fact a born physician." He was a man of uncommonly charm- 
ing personality, as well as of great refinement and intellectual 
cultivation, and was always welcome both as friend and doctor. 
He was a member of the New York Obstetrical and Pathological 
and County Medical societies, also of the Middlesex County 
(Connecticut) and the Connecticut State Medical societies, and 
made frequent contributions to medical journals. 



CHARLES THOMAS BONNEY 

"The writer of this sketch has no distinct recollection of his 
birth, yet that such an event actually occurred there seems 
no good reason to doubt, since it has been satisfactorily proved 
by incontrovertible evidence" writes Charles Bonney, in the 
Class Book, his deduction already presaging his leaning toward 



Harvard Class of 1852 

the law. "Tradition," he continues, " says, that on the twenty- 
eighth day of April, 1832, in an old farmhouse in the town of 
Rochester there were heard the cries of an infant, just intro- 
duced from a 'world of darkness to a world of light." He was 
the son of Charles and Catharine (Thomas) Bonney and of 
good old New England yeoman stock, both grandfathers having 
fought in the war of the Revolution. His mother died when 
he was eight weeks old, his father survived her barely two 
years, and the boy was taken into the family of his uncle, 
George Bonney, who proved a kind foster father. Near his 
birthplace, Bonney writes, "stands a weather-beaten school- 
house where I went to school, the place of a thousand associa- 
tions : 

"Still o'er these scenes my memory wakes, 
And fondly broods with miser care." 

A few rods from the schoolhouse was the academy which he 
attended until he went to Phillips Academy at Andover, where, 
he wrote, he should never forget the 

searching glances of Uncle Sam 1 (for he was so called by the stu- 
dents) nor his stern look and severe manners. I verily believe, his 
single expression inspired more awe among his pupils, than the whole 
College Faculty could produce, if each of them was a Sophocles. 

Bonney was salutatorian on graduating from Phillips 
Academy in 1848, and immediately entered Harvard. While 
there he was a member of the Harvard Natural History Society 
and received a Detur in the Sophomore year. At the Exhibi- 
tion of October, 1850, he and Chase participated in a Latin 
Dialogue, "Scapin and Geronte," translated from Moliere's 
"Fourberies de Scapin"; and in the Exhibition a year later he 
delivered a Disquisition on "Anti-Newtonian Heresies." At 
Commencement his part was a Dissertation on "The Prospect 
of Art in America"; and he was elected into the Phi Beta 
Kappa by right of his scholarship. On leaving college he 
studied law in Providence, Rhode Island, with his kinsman, 
John Eddy, Esquire, and later entered the Dane Law School 
where he and William W. Crapo roomed together. 

Completing his studies in the office of Thomas Dawes Eliot 
of New Bedford, Bonney was admitted to the Bar at the 

1 Samuel Harvey Taylor, LL.D. 
19 



Annals of the 

October term of 1855, the court being held in Nantucket on 
that occasion, and having bought out the interest of John H. W. 
Page, Esquire, settled in New Bedford. Those were the years 
when whaling was at its height, and Mr. Bonney's early prac- 
tice was largely in Marine and Admiralty cases; he was em- 
ployed as counsel in the settlement between crew and owners 
of the vessels constantly coming into port, was frequently re- 
tained in New London, Sag Harbor, and other ports in addi- 
tion to New Bedford, and his cases were often decided by 
Judge Lowell and Judge Sprague. He owned many vessels 
himself, and his experience had made him so thoroughly con- 
versant with all the intricacies of maritime law that when the 
Court of Alabama Claims was established he was appointed 
Assistant Counsel by Attorney General Creswell. He held 
the office from 1874 to 1876 and in connection therewith trav- 
elled all over New England, fulfilling his duties so successfully 
that he was again appointed to the office on its re-establish- 
ment in 1882, and held it for two years. When he retired in 
1876, and also in 1884, Attorney General Creswell wrote him 
a personal letter expressing his appreciation of the high quality 
of his service and his own gratitude. 

Mr. Bonney, on the decline of maritime practice, turned his 
attention to legislative business, and appeared as counsel on 
matters pertaining to taxation, fishery, mercantile affairs, 
probate, chancery et al., representing Marion, Mattapoisett 
and indeed all southern Massachusetts in litigation anent 
Buzzard's Bay; he was also associated with cases in relation 
to salvage matters. 

There can be no finer tribute to his success, ability and 
charming character than is given in a letter written by Charles 
Warren Clifford, Esquire, of New Bedford: 

I knew Mr. Bonney well. We practised against each other for many 
years without a ripple of antagonism. He was a delightful personal- 
ity, always pleasing in his manner and kindly in his disposition. He 
was an excellent lawyer, as one would expect from one who had been 
a Phi Beta Kappa man at Harvard, especially in Admiralty Law. 
This, of course, in those days was the principal business of this sea- 
port city, and I had a special course of preparation in it. But I 
always had to be on the lookout for pitfalls when I was trying a case 
against him, for he was exceedingly ingenious both in the matter 
which he presented, and in the manner in which he presented it. 

20 



Harvard Class of 1852 

We were associated very intimately for a long period in taking a very 
large amount of testimony in the Alabama Claims Court. It was 
perhaps his most brilliant effort while he was at the Bar. He was 
appointed Assistant Counsel for the United States and cross-exam- 
ined all the witnesses for the claimants in that memorable discussion 
and he did it with remarkable fairness both to the claimants and the 
Government. It was rather a trying position for him to be placed in. 
As a citizen and neighbor it was his duty to thoroughly investigate 
and contest claims of his neighbors and friends, but he did it with 
such entire good nature and such thorough devotion that, while he 
protected the United States, he incurred no enmities whatever. This 
was a remarkable achievement under circumstances which aroused a 
good deal of emotion. 

Mr. Bonney was a Republican and represented New Bedford 
in the Legislature of 1863 and 1864; he was also a member of 
the Republican State Central Committee for many years, and 
was on the School Committee for over thirty years. He was 
always interested in educational matters, and six of his chil- 
dren graduated from the New Bedford High School. 

He married, 25 September, 1856, Mary Lucretia Gibbs, 
daughter of Captain George C. Gibbs of New Bedford, and 
had seven children: Charles Thomas, Jr., born 21 March, 1858; 
Mary Gibbs, 20 November, i860; Katherine Thomas, 22 July, 
1862; John Cotton Gibbs, 13 July, 1865; Alice Lucretia, 15 
June, 1867; George Edward, 3 April, 1869; and Helen Louise, 
21 July, 1873. Of these, the three sons and one daughter, 
Alice, are now living. 

His oldest son writes me that he loves best to recall his 
father's kindness, his great generosity, his good-fellowship. 
For many years a prominent member and Trustee of the Trini- 
tarian Church, he gave to it not only of his purse, but of him- 
self, and he did much for his native town of Rochester and for 
the Academy he loved so well. He was a man of broad intel- 
lectual and political views, companionable, and open hearted. 
He died on the twenty-fifth of March, 1899. 

The Memorial of the Bar Association upon his death con- 
cludes with the following words : 

In his intercourse with his brethren at the Bar, he was genial, 
kindly and unaffected, and he closed his long professional career 
without any enemy in the profession, and with the universal love 
and esteem of its members. 

21 



Annals of the 

Happy indeed may that man count himself who leaves be- 
hind him a memory of none but generous deeds and gentle 
words, and even such an one was Charles Thomas Bonney. 

CALEB DAVIS BRADLEE 

Caleb Davis Bradlee, the son of Samuel and Elizabeth 
(Davis) Bradlee, was born in Boston on the twenty-fourth 
of February, 183 1, and was christened by the Reverend John 
Pierpont, pastor of the Hollis Street Church. 

His first experience of school was at the educational es- 
tablishment of Miss Mary Haley, afterward Mrs. Elisha D. 
Winslow of Jamaica Plain. Leaving there when he was eight 
years old, he was sent to Thayer and Cushing's School in 
Chauncy Place, and at the age of nine was promoted to the 
upper department, where education was always ''''prefaced, in- 
terlined and concluded by the most cruel use of Dr. Solomon," 
Davis informs us in the Class Book. As might be expected 
he did not love the school, and in 1846 he was transferred for 
three months to the tutelage of the Reverend Richard Pike of 
Dorchester, returning at the end of that time to the Chauncy 
Hall School; he received three medals while there, and having 
passed his examinations, became a member of the Freshman 
Class of '52. During his Senior year, he and Sam Hurd 
roomed together in the house of Mrs. Pratt, wife of Long- 
fellow's "Village Blacksmith," their windows giving on "the 
spreading chestnut tree." His health had always been deli- 
cate, and he was obliged to leave college for a time during the 
Junior and again in the Senior year. 

He entered the Divinity School in September after his 
graduation, and remained for a year and a half, then decid- 
ing, with the approval of his friend President Walker, to 
place himself under the care of the Reverend Rufus Ellis and 
the Reverend Frederic D. Huntington, teachers selected by 
himself. 

In August, 1854, he declined overtures to a call from Charles- 
town, New Hampshire, but accepted one to the then recently 
organized Allen Street Congregational Society in Cambridge, 
his ordination being conducted by the Reverend George R. 
Noyes, Thomas Starr King, President Walker, F. D. Hunting- 
ton, Frederick A. Whitney, Rufus Ellis and Arthur B. Fuller. 

22 



Harvard Class of 1852 

On the seventh of June, 1855, Bradlee married Caroline 
Gay, the daughter of George Gay of the Harvard Class of 
1810. 

During his Cambridge pastorate he performed the marriage 
ceremony for his two classmates, Thaxter and Porter; and 
was elected a member of the Cambridge School Committee in 
1858 and i860. 

His daughter, Nancy Gay Bradlee, was born on the third of 
December, 1858, and died on the fourteenth of September, 
1859. 

Having resigned from the Allen Street Church, and having 
declined calls from seven churches, Bradlee assumed the charge 
of the Third Religious Society in Dorchester. He had pre- 
viously been settled, temporarily, over the parish of the 
Reverend Warren H. Cudworth in East Boston while the pastor 
was serving as Chaplain in the Navy, and had also delivered 
several addresses before the New England Historic Genea- 
logical Society. He was also in fellowship with the 

State Historical Society of Wisconsin 

Rhode Island Historical Society 

Chicago Historical Society 

Maryland Historical Society 

New York Historical Society 

Pennsylvania Historical Society 

Tennessee Historical Society 

Old Colony Historical Society 

New Jersey Historical Society 

Virginia Historical and Philosophical Society 

Dorchester Antiquarian Society 

Vermont Historical Society 

Dedham Historical Society 

Iowa State Historical Society 

In 1864 Mr. Bradlee received a call to a new Unitarian 
Society then forming on Concord Street at the South End of 
Boston, and having accepted it, was installed over the Church 
of the Redeemer on the sixth of April. He remained there for 
eight years, preaching his farewell sermon in April, 1872, and 
during that time was also connected with the Boston School 
for the Ministry as Instructor in the "Duties of the Pastoral 
Office," lecturing weekly to the Senior Class. In 1876 he was 
called to the Church in Harrison Square, Dorchester, and after 

23 



Annals of the 

more than eleven years of faithful labor became Senior Pastor, 
having meanwhile celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of his 
ordination, in December, 1884, by exercises in the vestry of his 
church. 

In 1888 Mr. Bradlee received from Galesville University, 
Galesville, Wisconsin, the degree of Doctor of Divinity, and 
in the ensuing year that of Doctor of Philosophy. 

In 1893 he became temporary pastor of Christ Church, 
Longwood, remaining there for four years; in March, 1897, he 
asked to be relieved of the charge, thereby following the ex- 
ample of his father, who had himself retired at the age of 
sixty-six. Always delicate, as has been said, his rapidly fail- 
ing health caused him to feel no longer equal to the demands 
of a parish. 

The variety of Dr. Bradlee's interests and the amount of 
work which he accomplished are truly wonderful when we 
consider how hampered he must have been by his lack of 
physical strength. He was greatly interested in the founding 
of the Boston Young Men's Christian Union, and in the Home 
for Aged Couples, and was President of the Tremont Dis- 
pensary of Roxbury. His pastoral labors were untiring, and 
his parishioners became his warmest friends. He wrote and 
published two volumes of sermons: "Sermons for all Sects," 
and "Sermons for the Church," and a third, "A Voice from 
the Pulpit," was finished just before his death. 

In addition to the Societies already enumerated, Dr. Bradlee 
belonged to the American Authors Guild, was Honorary 
Member of the Georgia Historical Society, the State Historical 
Society of Kansas, associate member of the Victoria Institute 
and Philosophical Society of Great Britain, Fellow of the 
Clarendon Historical Society of Edinboro, the Royal Society 
of Northern Antiquaries at Copenhagen, Denmark, and of 
the Royal Society of Heraldry at Pisa, Italy. 

On the resignation of Dr. Edward Everett Hale, he was 
unanimously elected Moderator of the Boston Association of 
Ministers, and in 1888 he received the degree of S.T.D. from 
Tufts College. In the January before his death he was elected 
into the Chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa at William and Mary 
College, and asked to deliver an address there in June, but 
the condition of his health obliged him to decline the honor. 

Although not always able to attend the Class Meetings, his 

24 



Harvard Class of 1852 

feeling for his college and classmates was very strong, and 
he rejoiced in any honors which fell to the share of the men of 
'52. He evidently enjoyed his correspondence with the Class 
Secretary, and generously offered to supply the means for 
any members financially unable to be present at the annual 
gathering in Commencement week. 

Dr. Bradlee was for many years one of the Directors of 
the New England Historic Genealogical Society, and a fre- 
quent contributor to its publications, writing, among other 
papers, a Memoir of Professor George Cheyne Shattuck. 1 
He also served the Society as its Recording Secretary. 

In the best sense of the word he was a godly man. A de- 
lightful pastor, he was especially successful in parish organ- 
ization, and his life was a true example of the Golden Rule. 
Old-fashioned hospitality was one of his many virtues, and 
his door always stood ajar for friends and neighbors. Little 
children loved and came to him, for to the end his was the 
heart of a child, simple, trusting, full of cheer. 

In December, 1895, Dr. Bradlee celebrated the fortieth 
anniversary of his wedding. Two daughters died young; but 
one, Elizabeth Williams, wife of Walter Clark Smith, sur- 
vived him with his widow. He died after only a day's illness 
at his Brookline house on the first of May, 1897. 2 

PETER CHARDON BROOKS 

Mr. Brooks's own autobiography up to the time of his grad- 
uation is too delightful not to be inserted verbatim. 

Via Appiana across ibam forte one day, sicut mos est, 

Puffing an unlighted cigar, and scratching my caput cum much zest, 

Upon baked beans meditans, qui numquam dyspepsia dabunt, 

Horresco referens! Close by me I heard a very deep grunt, 

Et gemina Bootjack! Ecce friend Page cum uno 

Terribile ingens, though certainly magnificent tonio. 

"Oh, Page," exclaimed I — "splendidior vitro! 

What in thunder are you lugging round such a big book as that for?" 

"Turn quickly," said he, "Probe John James Jupiter Ammon! 

1 H. C. 1831; M.D. 1835; Professor and Dean of the Harvard Medical School, 
1864-1869. 

2 Free use has been made of the Memoir of Dr. Bradlee by the Reverend Alfred 
Manchester, which appeared in Volume lii of the New England Historical and Genea- 
logical Register. 

25 



Annals of the 

To be Secretary of the Class is all confounded (g-g-g-gas) spurious 

gammon 
O temporal O mores! Vide hoc libro ibi 
Take it, oh take it, et vostro biography scribe." 
At that tremenjous book, of oaths having uttered several thousand 
Such as Corpo di Bacco! Mehercula! Sacre! Mille tonnerres! 

Potztausend! 
"Si Senor," inquo blandly, "con multo piace, 
But bejabbers, the divil a bit of a word have I got to say." 
However, arma virumque canabo, qui est terque quaterque 
Beatus to write anything - — no matter, whatever it may be. 
But Musa, look sharp with your pen, for I, to relate, or invent, I 
Shall need all the aid you can give, so Musa aspirate canenti. 

Unpublished poems of John Flaccus Naso Smith 
Brooks continues: 

Peter C. Brooks, son of Gorham (H. C. 1814) and Ellen Shep- 
herd, born at Watertown, Mass., 8 May, 1831, prepared for college 
by Samuel Eliot entirely devoid of moral character, having lost it 
out of his pocket and being compelled to write another for the occa- 
sion, entered and went through college with the greatest honor and 
with ease took the highest part at the graduation of his Class. It 
was delivered by his friend Choate, and he read it all through with 
much pleasure. But this is not all, as Dr. Wayland is said to have 
remarked once if not twice in his Political Economy. Previous to 
entering college nothing of any vital importance had occurred to 
him, nor is he aware of any since, but he will never forget the four 
happy years he has spent there. He will always recur with pleasure 
as he will always hold fresh in his memory those pleasant college 
scenes and times and their associations: that ample form, those large 
but nervous boots and spotless kerchief of the respected Potty 1 — 
the youthful hair and red gimbetto of the majestic and eloquent 
bard 2 — the powdered head and curtailed queue of the venerable 
Sales 3 — the somewhat large, though delicately constructed nether 
jaw of our friend Joe, 4 equal to any "twenty-five hoss power" and 
his beard — Christopher Columbus! don't let him forget his beard. 
He knows every wrinkle, every hair, on the noble head of Dr. Walker, 5 
from several years deep and thoughtful contemplation. 

The high and intellectual forehead of the brilliant Mr. Jennison, 6 
the flaxen curls of "Oh, Prexy" 7 will forever remain fixed in the 

1 Edward Tyrrel Charming. 2 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. 

3 Francis Sales. * Joseph Lovering. 

5 Rev. James Walker, D.D. s James Jennison, tutor 1851-1872. 
7 Jared Sparks. 

26 



PLATE II 








BROOKS 



BUTTRICK 



H- W. BROWN 



A. BROWN 
CAN FIELD 



Harvard Class of 1852 

mind's eye as vividly as the pleasing smells of Cooke 1 in his nose's 
imagination. He feels confident in asserting that the mole on the 
left of Dr. Beck's 2 nose will always stay there, at least in theory, 
The Balm of a Thousand Flowers and Russia Salve to the contrary 
(both were recommended to him by his friend Kossuth). Mr. So- 
phocles's 3 ever-winning smile and Grecian sandals — Mr. Brown's 4 
short but easy reign — Mr. Felton's 5 ready gibes and sticky seats 
— Mr. Agassiz's 6 "Now, you sir, you wid de red head dere, take 
care of dat tertiary stratar, don't be pickin it dat way, I beg of you, 
it is a wary waluable spacemen" — The deep sentiment and broad- 
brimmed hat of Dr. Francis 7 — the pathetic and logical exactness 
of Dr. Noyes 8 - — the wonderful fluency and variety of both ■ — ■ and 
last though not least the eloquent orations and expressive admoni- 
tions of the worthy President, these, and many other associations 
of College and the Class of '52 will ever be recalled with pleasure 
by its 

Obedient and humble servant, 

Peter C. Brooks. 
Cambridge, May 7, 1852. 

Mr. Brooks passed the winter after graduating in New 
Orleans in the office of his grandfather, Resin D. Shepherd. 
Returning to Boston in May, he sailed for Europe in July 
and during his absence visited every country, passing six 
months in Paris, five months in Vienna and going to the 
Crimea. Coming home in the autumn of 1855, he divided 
his life between Medford, which was his summer home, 
and Boston, where he lived during the winter in Pemberton 
Square, until 1869, when he bought a house on Arlington 
Street. 9 

On the fourth of October, 1866, he married Sarah, daughter 
of Amos Adams Lawrence (H. C. 1835), and after a stay of 
six months in Europe he resided for several years chiefly in 
Medford, where with an estate of three thousand acres, he 

1 Josiah Parsons Cooke. 

2 Charles Beck. 

3 Evangelinus Apostolides Sophocles. 

4 The Harvard Catalogue gives no Brown, at a date to fit Mr. Brooks's description. 
Perhaps his "reign" was too "short" to be mentioned. 

5 Cornelius Conway Felton. 

6 Louis Agassiz. 

7 Rev. Convers Francis, D.D. 

8 Rev. George Rapall Noyes, D.D. 

9 Mr. Brooks removed later to No. 2 Deerfield Street, where he died on the 
twenty-seventh of January, 1920. 

27 



Annals of the 

devoted himself to raising fancy stock, horses, cattle and 
sheep. 

Mr. Brooks is a member, and was for some time Secretary, 
of the Massachusetts Society for the Promotion of Agricul- 
ture, and he was for several years a Director of the Merchants 
Exchange Company and of the Cocheco Mills. He is a mem- 
ber of the Somerset Club, of the Thursday Evening Club and 
a life member of the Museum of Fine Arts. 

A keen lover of literature and of the Fine Arts, in regard to 
which he is a well-known connoisseur, he has himself a fine 
collection of paintings. Mr. Brooks's generosity made possi- 
ble the purchase of Dallin's equestrian statue "The Appeal to 
the Great Spirit," which stands outside the Art Museum. 
His delicate health has prevented his entering upon any 
active career and precluded also his attending the reunions 
of his Class. "I regret not being able to be present on the 
evening of the twenty-ninth," he says in answer to Denny's 
summons to the Fortieth Anniversary, — "should be used 
up for fourteen (14) days and fifteen (15) nights. . . . Hoping 
you may be around and as lively as a trout at the sixth de- 
cade." He showed his loyalty for the old class, however, by 
promising to do his best to vote for Cheever when he was 
nominated for the Board of Overseers. "I shall buttonhole 
and talk like a father to any alumnus who falls my way" he 
replied to Denny's note on the subject. "I have already 
stated to two young alumni here that no overseer should be 
elected under sixty-four, to which they assented with great 
urbanity." 

Mr. Brooks has two children, Eleanor, the wife of Richard 
Middlecott Saltonstall (H. C. 1880) and Lawrence Brooks, 
born 9 November, 1868, who graduated from Harvard in 
1891. Since the death of Mrs. Brooks, on the third of July, 
191 5, he has made his home wholly in Boston. 

One of the most lovely parts of the beautiful Park System 
of Boston, is that called the Mystic Valley Parkway, in Win- 
chester and Medford, bordering the Upper and Lower Mystic 
Lakes. A large tract of the land included therein was the gift 
of Mr. Brooks, who has contributed also to the expense of 
building the Whitmore Brook "entrance road" to the Middle- 
sex Fells, and to two other important roads in the same do- 
main. 

28 



Harvard Class of 1852 

ADDISON BROWN 

The career of Addison Brown is that of a New England boy 
at his best. He was born in West Newbury on Sunday the 
twenty-first of February, 1830, the eldest of the five children 
of Addison and Catharine Babson (Griffin) Brown. His 
father, himself a shoe-manufacturer, was descended from a 
race of New England farmers; his mother was the daughter 
of a sea captain. "Verily," he says of himself, 

"I swear, 't is better to be lowly born, 
And rank with humble livers in content, 

Than to be perked up in a glist'ning grief, 
And wear a golden sorrow." 

Addison was a diminutive and fragile baby, and was scarcely 
expected to live; when he first began to walk his chances were 
not improved by his falling down a high bank into a quan- 
tity of broken glass, and cutting his nose neatly open into two 
longitudinal sections, that he might not "hereafter lack a mark 
of identification among the innumerable Browns," he writes. 

He went to the West Newbury common school until he was 
twelve, but in the summer of his thirteenth year he began to 
study Latin with a Mr. Bullen, purely from a love of study, 
and with no thought of a collegiate education. Mr. Bullen's 
school closing at the end of two terms. Addison worked for 
three years in his father's shoe shop, becoming an expert in 
the cutting out of shoes, an accomplishment which he turned 
to pecuniary account during two College vacations. He also 
did errands, and finding himself in Newburyport one day, 
entered a bookstore and bought a Latin Grammar and Reader. 
The Reverend J. Q. A. Edgell, who was settled in West New- 
bury, learning of Addison's desire for study, offered to hear him 
recite, an opportunity of which the boy gladly availed him- 
self. He was interested also in phrenology and instrumental 
music and had sung in the church choir ever since he was 
ten years old. 

In the autumn of 1845 Addison's father met with financial 
reverses, which made it necessary for him to sell his home- 
stead and remove to Bradford; his son followed him at the 
end of ten months, having worked for a neighbor in the mean- 
time. On joining his family, Brown immediately entered the 

29 



Annals of the 

Bradford Academy, at that time under the management of 
Benjamin Greenleaf, the eminent mathematician, who, ap- 
preciating the lad's unusual abilities, urged him to prepare for 
college. The financial question made the idea seem impossi- 
ble at the time, but he remained at the Academy until May, 
1847, when he obtained a profitable position in a Haverhill 
shoe factory, continuing his preparatory course in all his 
leisure hours, and reciting several times a week to Mr. Green- 
leaf. He succeeded in laying up half of the sum needed for his 
college expenses, and in September, 1848, entered the Fresh- 
man Class at Amherst College. He passed a very happy year 
there, but his heart had always been set upon Harvard, and 
he had taken Amherst merely as a stepping-stone, because it 
was less expensive. So in the autumn of 1849 he at last 
reached the promised land of Cambridge and became a mem- 
ber of the Sophomore Class. He roomed in Divinity Hall 5, 
and having no friends, his first year was a dismal one, but as 
his classmates grew to know him, the prospect changed, and 
his ensuing years at Harvard were very happy ones. He 
played the organ for the College Choir, was a member of the 
Institute of 1770, and was of course elected into the Phi Beta 
Kappa, as he graduated second scholar in the Class. His 
part at Commencement was an English Oration on Henry 
Clay, and at the undergraduate Exhibitions he delivered an 
English Oration in May, 1852, on "Unsuccessful Great Men," 
and in May, 1851, a Greek Dialogue with George Cary from 
Shakespeare's "Henry the Eighth." He received a Bowdoin 
Prize for a Dissertation in 185 1. 

On leaving college, Brown began to study law with John C. 
Marsh of Haverhill, and in 1853 entered the Dane Law School; 1 
he remained there for only a year, however, removing in 1854 
to New York, where he went into the office of Brown, Hall and 
Vanderpool. 

On January first, 1856, he married Mary C. Barrett, the 
daughter of Dr. Dustin Barrett of Hudson, New Hampshire, 
and a year later formed a partnership with E. R. Bogardus. 
In 1881 President Garfield appointed him United States Judge 
of the District Court for the Southern District of New York 
as successor to his classmate William Choate, an honorable 
but ill-paid office, which his private means enabled him to 

1 The Harvard Law School, universally called the Dane Law School at that time. 

30 



Harvard Class of 1852 

retain until 1901. Judge Brown had over sixteen hundred 
cases while on the bench, and on retiring published a small 
volume, an index or digest of his decisions while in office, a 
book of the utmost value, for his methods along certain lines 
established precedents in Admiralty law. Practical, patient, 
himself the chief investigator in trials without a jury, his wide 
range of mathematical and geometrical knowledge enabled 
him to develop a new application of scientific testimony in 
dealing with Admiralty causes, while his human sympathy 
filled him with kind consideration for the humbler class of 
litigants; and he was always indulgent to the rights of canal 
boats and small harbor barges. 

Unfailing in his courtesy, he was especially thoughtful of 
the younger members of the profession, and is gratefully re- 
membered by many a lawyer who tried his first case before 
him. 

But law was only one of Judge Brown's interests. Always 
retaining his love for music, he composed the melody for sev- 
eral hymns. In connection with his profession, his studies in 
astronomy and mathematics have been mentioned, but not his 
knowledge of botany, with which his name is especially asso- 
ciated. In Saturday afternoon excursions for health, in the 
early seventies, Judge Brown's ever active mind led to his 
observation of botanical matters, and gradually becoming 
more interested, he finally adopted it as his "fad," for diver- 
sion, joining the Torrey Botanical Club in 1875. He was 
Vice-President of the society from 1879 to 1886, and President 
after 1890, publishing in connection with Professor N. L. 
Britton J a volume on "Illustrated Flora." At the time it 
was the only work of its kind, and it was printed wholly at 
Judge Brown's own expense, although later he may have re- 
covered some of the outlay,- as the book met eager purchase; 
but even at the risk of a total pecuniary loss to himself, he 
wished to accomplish his purpose of aiding the botanical in- 
vestigation of native plants. The edition was exhausted in 
1909, and the preparation of a second edition was undertaken 
just before his death. 

When the movement for the New York Botanical Garden 
was initiated, Judge Brown was on the Committee appointed 

1 Nathaniel Lord Britton, Professor Emeritus, Columbia University, now of the 
New York Botanical Garden. 

31 



Annals of the 

by the Torrey Botanical Club, in 1888, and made the initial 
subscription of twenty-five thousand dollars to the fund, which 
was necessary for the appropriation of Bronx Park to the 
purpose. He helped to draft the charter, was one of the Board 
of Managers from the beginning, and President from 1910 
until his death. "A Puritan," as his friend Judge Choate 
describes him, Judge Brown had little tolerance for any deflec- 
tion from the path of personal honor and integrity; the frugal 
virtues of his Puritan forefathers were his also, and self-indul- 
gence in any form was unknown to him; but he was generous 
in help to his fellow-men, and lavish in his contributions to 
the Botanical Garden, as has been seen, and to many other 
interests. 

His wife, who had been for many years an invalid, died 
in 1887, and on the twentieth of July, 1893, he married Miss 
Helen Carpenter Gaskin, daughter of John W. and Hannah C. 
Gaskin. The marriage brought him great happiness and the 
hitherto unknown joy of paternity, for on the thirtieth of June, 
1894, was born Addison Brown, Jr., at Great Barrington, 
Massachusetts, "the last, selected ex industria, to give him 
like me, a birthright in the old Bay State," he wrote the Class 
Secretary, adding: "If I could not win the Cradle with the 
first in the Class, maybe I can win as the last." Addison Brown, 
Jr., passed a year at Williams College. Leaving there on his 
father's death, he transferred himself to Columbia University, 
in order to be near his mother; but after completing his Sopho- 
more year he studied agriculture at the University of California 
and became a ranch owner in Colorado. Judge Brown's second 
son, Ralph Gascoigne (H. C. 1918), was born on the first of 
March, 1897; his daughter Elinor Maria on the twenty-fifth of 
July, 1899; and his fourth child, Stanley Noel, on the twenty- 
fifth of December, 1901. 

In 1893 the many practitioners who had appeared before 
Judge Brown and his classmate, Judge Choate, honored them 
by presenting their separate portraits to the United States 
District Court; and in 1902 Harvard conferred on Brown the 
degree of LL.D. as "a learned and upright judge, whose service 
has been long and honorable, a botanist also, and a friend of 
botanists." 

Diligent to the last, working tirelessly in spite of "pain and 
physical ills," which as Judge Choate said of him, "would have 

32 



Harvard Class of 1852 

crushed the very thought out of most men," he died at his 
home in New York on the ninth of April, 191 3. 

He was a member of the Sons of the Revolution (carrying 
his ancestry indeed back to Governor Thomas Dudley of old 
Colony days) and also of the New York Historical Society and 
of the American Geographical Society. His co-worker, Dr. 
Britton, wrote a short memoir of him for the Journal of the 
New York Botanical Garden for June, 1913, which was after- 
wards separately printed, and a Memorial was also published 
of the Proceedings of the New York Bar, at a meeting held 
3 June, 191 3. To both of these we are greatly indebted. 

In addition to the benefactions of Judge Brown which have 
been mentioned, are a prize of one hundred dollars to be 
awarded for an essay on Maritime or International Law at the 
Harvard Law School, and the Addison Brown Scholarships 
which he founded both at Harvard and at Amherst colleges. 
He gave in all about sixty thousand dollars to the Botanical 
Garden, and left legacies of five hundred dollars each to many 
New York charities and to the Public Library at his birth- 
place, West Newbury. He also bequeathed five thousand 
dollars to Bradford Academy, of which he had been a Trus- 
tee for fifty years, and where his mother, sisters, first wife, 
nieces and grand-niece had been educated. 

HENRY WILLIAM BROWN 

Born on the twenty-fifth of June, 183 1, Brown attained his 
majority on his Class Day. He was the son of Albert and 
Mary Blair (Eaton) Brown, and the "cot where I was born 
is a little story-and-a-half house now standing on Lincoln 
Street, Worcester," he informs the readers of the Class Book. 
Descended from a "line of farmers and shoemakers," he further 
tells us that he was the first of his race to receive a liberal 
education, and having been distinguished for good behavior 
at school, was set apart by the wise ones for the ministry. 
Always a lover of books, he determined to go to college from 
the time he learned the meaning of the word. He prepared 
first with R. H. Holmes, and on his leaving Worcester, Brown 
completed his entrance studies with Elbridge Smith, later a 
teacher in the Cambridge High School. Brown feared at first 
that he might be unable to remain at college on account of the 

33 



Annals of the 

delicacy of his health, but Cambridge air apparently agreed 
with him, and his description of his life there we give in his 
own words : 

My Freshman year was very pleasant to me, and I enjoyed the 
enviable distinction of being the smallest man in my class, my only 
rival at that time being (mirabile dictu) R: Ware. I confess that my 
littleness was on one or two occasions somewhat annoying to me, 
as Professor Felton would express extreme surprise at my being a 
Sophomore (this was early in my Sophomore year) and soon after my 
admission to college I heard one of the maid servants in Commons 
exclaim as I passed "There goes the little Freshman." The arrival 
of a Freshman bearing the same name with myself and rejoicing (?) 
in still smaller proportions, transferred the title of "Little Brown" 
from me, and I soon began to grow, and have at length attained a 
height equal to that of the stalwart Whittemore, a result which that 
wise prognosticator foretold in our Freshman days. 

Brown belonged to the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, 
to the Harvard Natural History Society, and to the Institute 
of 1770. At the Exhibition of October, 1850, he had a part 
and delivered an English Oration at Commencement. He 
received a Detur in the Sophomore year, took the Bowdoin 
Prize for a Latin poem, and graduating sixth in the class was, 
of course, a member of the Phi Beta Kappa. 

On leaving college he taught for two years at Greenwich, 
Rhode Island, in the school of Charles W. Greene, 1 and entered 
the Divinity School in the September of 1854, being selected 
while there to preach the Christmas sermon. Graduating in 
July, 1857, he sailed for Germany in August. 

On May eighth, i860, he married Harriet, daughter of 
Stephen K. and Sarah Waterman (Brown) Rathbone of Provi- 
dence, and having been ordained, was settled in June over 
the Unitarian Church at Augusta, Maine, remaining there 
until September, 1866. A year later he accepted a call to a 
parish at Sacramento, California, and there his son, Conway 
Rathbone Brown, was born on the eighth of November, 1867. 
He died in boyhood on the third of December, 1883. Brown 
resigned from his parish in 1873, and after teaching eight 
months at the Charlestown High School he sailed for Ger- 
many, where he passed a year. His delicate health led to his 

1 Charles Winston Greene, H. C. 1802. 

34 



Harvard Class of 1852 

giving up the ministry, and on his return he became a teacher 
at the State Normal School in his old home, Worcester, and 
taught there from 1875 to 1896. During those years he made 
an excellent translation of "The Mind of the Child" and "The 
Mental Development of the Child" by Professor W. Preyer. 
He composed also a reunion hymn which is still sung at the 
gatherings of the Normal School graduates, and wherein we 
fancy we trace a hint of old college memories, the more so that 
it is sung to the tune of Fair Harvard. 

ALMA MATER 

How fair is the landscape when viewed from the height 

Where we stand at the close of the day, 
All the far-away hills in their violet light, 

All the low-lying fields in the gray! 
So the mind with delight from the summit looks down 

At the end of some day of its days, 
On the scene of its labor, its cross and its crown, 

Transfigured by vanishing rays. 

hands that yet thrill with the touch of the scroll 

That to you is the symbol of power, 
You are clasped by our own as you come to the goal, 

We are one in the joy of this hour. 
Young Knights ! on your neck has been laid the light blow 

Of the sword that the Commonwealth wields, 
And you gaze on the brightness undimmed by a foe, 

Of your armor, your spears and your shields. 

On ours there is many a dent and a stain, 

But the vow you now breathe we renew, — 
To be brave and sincere, to be just and humane, 

In the field where our service is due. 
May a fellowship gentle and loyal and pure 

Dim the image of self in each heart, 
As when night with her shade comes the earth to obscure 

All separate shadows depart. 

On retiring from his position as teacher, Mr. Brown again 
went to Europe; a severe illness rendering him an invalid, he 
thenceforth passed his winters in Florida, where he died at 
Daytona on the twenty-first of February, 1900. His widow 
survived him. 

35 



Annals of the 



EDWARD KING BUTTRICK 

The son of Ephraim (H. C. 1819) and Mary (King) Buttrick, 
born on the twenty-third of January, 1831, Edward King 
Buttrick prepared for college with Gideon F. Thayer. Hav- 
ing studied for three years at the Law School, he entered the 
office of his father in East Cambridge, and at the end of nine 
months was admitted to the bar in 1855; but soon after form- 
ing a partnership with Horace L. H. Hazelton, he suffered a 
hemorrhage which necessitated his leaving home. Buttrick 
therefore sailed for Europe, where he travelled for some months, 
returning to resume his law practice afresh with the New 
Year of 1856. 

All went well until the ensuing July, when, having another 
hemorrhage while on a fishing trip, he was forced again to re- 
nounce his profession and to start anew on a search for health. 
He passed six months in the West, and in 1857 decided to go 
into the lumber business at La Crosse, Wisconsin, in com- 
pany with his brother Frank. A year later their mill was 
burned with heavy loss, and in 1858, a similar experience fol- 
lowing with a flour mill in which he was interested, he and 
his brother essayed a commission business in Milwaukee, 
and while there Buttrick volunteered, in December, 1863, 
and was appointed Captain of the Thirty-first Regiment of 
Wisconsin Volunteers. He was ill for a time, and in hospital, 
but rejoined his regiment and was on the staff of Major- 
General Thomas, and of Brigadier-General Baird, serving 
through the Atlanta Campaign, at Lost Mountain and other 
battles, and accompanying General Baird in his march to the 
sea. 

From near Atlanta, Georgia, in the July of 1864, Buttrick 
wrote to Denny in acknowledgment of the Class Supper 
notice. He and Stone had of course served together for two 
years on General Thomas's staff, and he speaks of often chat- 
ting with him about college days and of often seeing others 
from old Massachusetts who were stationed near him. 

Having been mustered out in November, 1865, Major But- 
trick married, September twentieth, 1866, Mary, daughter of 
Amos Sawyer of Milwaukee. They had three children; Mary, 
Edward Sawyer, and Lawrence Snelling Buttrick. After con- 
tinuing for some time in the lumber business in Milwaukee, 

36 



Harvard Class of 1852 

Major Buttrick moved in the early eighties to Stetsonville, 
Wisconsin, where he lived until 1889, when "having," as he 
writes, "manufactured all the lumber there," he again settled 
in Milwaukee, remaining until his retirement from business 
in 1905. 

The last ten years of his life were passed in South Mil- 
waukee, where he died on November twelfth, 191 5. Major 
Buttrick was not present at Commencement after the Com- 
memoration of 1865, but he never lost interest in the old 
days, and was always eager to hear of all connected with the 
Class. It was a real sorrow to him that in 1886, when he had 
planned to go to Cambridge, he was prevented at the last 
minute by an accident to his foreman, which made it impossi- 
ble for him to leave home. 

Through no fault of his own, beginning with the failure of 
his health in the year of his admission to the Bar, Major But- 
trick met with many misfortunes. It is easy enough to be 
gay and brave when "Fortune perches on our banners," but 
the higher courage is that which holds its own against the 
"blows and buffets of the world," enabling its possessors to 
rise above reverses of fortune and to go his way unembittered, 
full of charity, and seeking still the highest. Courage like 
this was Edward King Buttrick's. 

"My father has been the. inspiration of my life," writes one 
of his children, "his character was remarkable among all men 
as lofty in its ideals, with charity and love for all. He had 
much to endure, and it was never inflicted on others." What 
man could ask to leave his children a goodlier heritage than 
this ensample? 

CHARLES TAYLOR CANFIELD 

Charles Taylor Canfield was born on the thirteenth of 
April, 1823, in Danby, Tompkins County, New York. He was 
the son of Milton B. 1 Canfield and Hannah Clifford. His 
father was a lawyer, but had retired from active practice, and 
the boy's early associations were all those of a country life. 
He prepared for and went through College by means of his 

1 Sibley in his manuscript notes on Harvard Graduates, now in possession of the 
Massachusetts Historical Society, says that the father's middle name was Bassett or 
Beach. 

37 



Annals of the 

own exertions, passing the year of 1850-51 at Amherst and 
entering Harvard in the Senior year, at which time he gave 
his place of residence as Ithaca, which was but seven miles 
from Danby. He had a part at the May Exhibition of 1852, 
and at Commencement delivered a Dissertation on "Self Re- 
spect considered as an Element of Republican Character." 

On leaving College he entered the Divinity School, where 
he and Bradlee chummed together, and he was appointed 
College Proctor in November, 1853. He graduated from the 
Divinity School in 1855. 

He was not ordained until October, i860 — the ceremony 
taking place at Uxbridge, Massachusetts, where he was settled 
for a short time, and on February twelfth of the succeeding 
year he was married at the Unitarian Church at Walpole, 
New Hampshire, to Louisa Bellows Hayward. April, 1862 
found him pastor of the Unitarian Church at Lockport, 
Illinois, but his stay there was brief, for he became Chaplain 
of the Thirty-Sixth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers 
in August of the same year, being present at the battle of 
Fredericksburg, Virginia; the siege of Vicksburg, Mississippi; 
and of Jackson, Mississippi, resigning in October, 1863. 

In a pleasant letter to the Class Secretary acknowledging 
the notice of the Tenth Anniversary, which was written just 
before his chaplaincy, and headed "For auld lang syne," he 
regretted his inability to be present in the body, 

but certainly in the spirit I shall be with you. And wherever the 
body is, I will seek to honor those of ours who have risked their 
lives and fortunes for the honor and perpetuity of our beloved 
country. 

Canfield's retirement from the Army was a necessity, as he 
was invalided home on account of malaria contracted in 
Mississippi, from the effects of which he never wholly re- 
covered. 

His next parish, on his return from the war, was in Ber- 
nardstown, Massachusetts; resigning in 1867, he accepted a 
resident professorship in the Boston School for the Ministry, 1 

1 The Boston School for the Ministry was founded about 1866, the Reverend 
George H. Hepworth being its moving spirit and guiding star during its brief career. 
Canfield was the only resident professor. Caleb Davis Bradlee lectured weekly before 
the School as Instructor in the Duties of the Pastoral Office. See the notice of Bradlee, 
ante, p. 23. 

38 



Harvard Class of 1852 

which two years later was merged in the Harvard Divinity 
School. Mr. Canfield then conducted a small private school 
for boys, giving it up in 1875 to assume the charge of the Asso- 
ciated Charities of Boston, on Chardon Street, an office which 
he held for twelve years. From 1878 until a short time before 
his death he made his home in Cambridge, although in 1890 
and again in 1893 he was settled for a few months at Ellsworth, 
Maine, and at Bath, New Hampshire, respectively. 

Canfield's reserved disposition prevented his entering with 
enthusiasm into general society, but he never failed in ten- 
derness to children and animals, for whom he felt especial 
fondness, and in his early years he was a successful teacher of 
boys. A student and scholar, he devoted all his leisure to 
writing on theological subjects of an abstruse nature, and his 
recreation was found in the long walks to which he was ad- 
dicted to the end of his life. 

His wife pre-deceased him by many years. Three children, 
1 Mary Gardner, Charles Taylor, Jr., and Charles Hayward 
Canfield, died in early childhood, but he left two daughters, 
Grace Rebecca and Alice Louisa Canfield. 

He died at Walpole, New Hampshire, on the eighth of Feb- 
ruary, 1913. Dr. Cheever thus concludes the short notice of 
him which, as temporary Class Secretary, he wrote for the 
Harvard Graduates' Magazine: : 

Truly, a worthy, consistent and useful life, one of steady work in 
teaching, both from rostrum and pulpit. His example again proves 
that a purely professional life is not inconsistent with very advanced 
age. 

GEORGE LOVELL CARY 

Cary was the son of William Hiram and Lydia Daniells 
(Lovell) Cary, and was born on the tenth of May, 1830, at 
Medway, Massachusetts. He attended Leicester Academy 
and the Williston Seminary at Easthampton, Massachusetts, 
before entering Harvard, and attained to a high order of 
scholarship during his college career. He received a Sopho- 
more Detur, took part in a Greek Dialogue with Addison 
Brown in the May Exhibition of 1851, and was a member of 
the Phi Beta Kappa. He belonged to the Harvard Natural 

1 September, 1913. 

39 



Annals of the 

History Society, and to the Institute of 1770, as well as to the 
Psi Upsilon. 

Immediately after graduation Cary entered the manufac- 
turing business of his father in Medway. He was married 
12 March, 1854, to Miss Mary Isabella Harding of Spring- 
field, who was born on the twenty-ninth of December, 1834. 
Cary's tastes, however, inclined him to a scholarly life, and 
in 1855, he taught in the Medway High School, a year later 
assuming the position of Acting Professor of Greek at Antioch 
College, Yellow Springs, Ohio, receiving the appointment of 
Professor in Greek and Latin two years later. 

In 1862 he became Assistant Professor of Biblical and His- 
toric Literature at the Meadville Theological School, a posi- 
tion which he held for a year, being then appointed Professor 
of New Testament Literature and of Greek. In 1891 he was 
made President. Although more than once he desired to be 
released from office, the Trustees, with reason, appreciated his 
value too highly to accept his resignation, and he was re-- 
peatedly persuaded to remain until 1901, when his failing 
strength made his retirement necessary. 

President Cary's accomplishment and influence in con- 
nection with the Meadville Theological School cannot be over- 
estimated. Gifted with rare sagacity and poise, he showed 
tact as well as courage and dignity in advocating the views of 
Unitarians, and at his birthday celebration in 1910, tribute 
was paid both to those qualities and to "the scholarship with 
which he investigated and taught the problems of that faith 
and the patient labor and skill with which he had guided the 
administration of the school and teaching." 

President Cary's scholarship was not confined to theological 
subjects. During his life in Meadville he was at the head of the 
Arts Society, the Library Society and several others. He be- 
longed to the Archaeological Society of America, and to the 
Geographical Society, and was a member of the International 
Peace Conference. Finding time also for writing, he pub- 
lished "An Introduction to the Greek of the New Testament" 
and "The Synoptic Gospels;" he contributed papers to the 
meetings of the Unitarian Conference, to magazines and to 
the "International Handbooks to the New Testament," edited 
by Orello Cone, D.D. 

In 1893 Allegheny College conferred on him the degree of 

40 



PLATE I I I 






CARY CHASE 

CH EEVER 
J. H. CHOATE W.G.CHOATE 



Harvard Class of 1852 

L.H.D., a degree then rarely given, and no empty honor, for 
it is symbolic of real eminence in literary scholarship. 

The seventieth year of his life, and the thirtieth year of his 
connection with the Theological School was celebrated by a 
luncheon in Boston during Anniversary Week of 1900; and 
on his retirement from office as President of the Theological 
School he was given the title of Professor Emeritus. 

Dr. and Mrs. Gary observed the fiftieth anniversary of 
their wedding by a reception at their home on the twelfth of 
March, 1904. Their only child, Margaret Lovell Cary, was 
not born until thirteen years after their marriage. She be- 
came the wife of the Reverend Frank Wright Pratt, who grad- 
uated from Meadville in 1890, and it was while visiting them 
in their home at Calgary, Alberta, Canada, that Dr. Cary 
was attacked with pneumonia, dying there on the twenty- 
fifth of June, 1910. Mrs. Cary, who survived him, died in 
May, 1917. 

We cannot close our sketch of Dr. Cary without mention of 
his social charm, which was of course a powerful factor for one 
in his position. Visiting Europe for the first time in 1872 on 
account of his health, he passed a year and a half on the Con- 
tinent, deriving so much benefit from the voyage that thereafter 
he lost no opportunity of repeating it. His last extensive tour 
was accomplished when he was in his eightieth year. 

REGINALD HEBER CHASE 

The son of the Reverend Moses Bailey and Sarah Curtis 
(Joynes) Chase, Reginald Heber Chase was born in Hopkin- 
ton, New Hampshire, on the twenty-fifth of March, 1832. 
His father was a clergyman of the Episcopal Church and a 
Chaplain in the Navy, his mother was the daughter of Colonel 
Levin Joynes, 1 who served in the Continental Army and was 
taken prisoner in the attack on Chew's House, at the battle 
of Germantown. 

1 Born in Accomack County, Virginia, 6 January, 1753. He entered the Revolu- 
tionary War as Captain of the Ninth Virginia Regiment and was mustered out a 
Colonel. A member of the Virginia Senate, he took a prominent part in the delibera- 
tions of that body. He died at his residence, Mount Prospect, Accomack County, 
27 October, 1794. An ardent patriot, and a devoted Episcopalian, he left behind a 
memory that is fragrant with service, sacrifice and good citizenship. (From his name- 
sake and grandson, Levin Joynes Chase.) 

41 



Annals of the 

Reginald's father moved to Cambridge when his son was 
thirteen, for the sake of better educational advantages for 
his children. Chase was a member of the Institute of 1770, 
but took comparatively little part in the college activities 
owing to the fact that he always lived at home. He received 
a Sophomore Detur, the Bowdoin Prize for Latin Verse in 
1851, and a prize for a Latin Version in 1852. He graduated 
seventh in the class, participating in the exhibitions of October, 
1850 and 1851, and delivering an English Oration at Com- 
mencement; he was of course in the Phi Beta Kappa. At the 
Class Supper he wrote himself down as uncertain anent his 
future career, but he soon decided upon teaching, and in 1853, 
opened a private Latin school in Cambridge with Thomas 
Chase (H. C. 1848), and was tutor in Latin at college during 
the intervening years until March, 1858, when he resigned 
his tutorship. He, of course, saw more or less of Gurney, 
Wright, and other members of the class while still living in 
Cambridge. 

On the thirty-first of May, 1859, Chase married Susan 
Ladd Stanwood, daughter of Joseph and Louisa Ayer (Per- 
kins) Stanwood, of Hopkinton and their oldest child Joseph 
Stanwood Chase was born in the following year. Mr. Chase 
kept a private school for a time at West Chester, Pennsylvania, 
moving later to Philadelphia, where he became Principal of 
the Collegiate School, an institution which died with him. 
His specialty throughout life was Greek, Latin and Classical 
History, and his son writes that at the time of his death, he 
was regarded as one of the most erudite classical scholars in 
the country. He edited several text-books including a popular 
edition of Virgil. 

He was a man of great reserve, possessing what Tennyson calls 
a "sublime repression of himself" and so modest that only his fam- 
ily and intimate friends and associates knew the depth of his learn- 
ing and the beauty of his character. His manner was dignified and 
kindly, and he was greatly beloved by all who knew him well enough 
to penetrate his natural reserve. 1 

"He was a scholar and a ripe and good one. 



To those men that sought him sweet as Summer." 

1 Letter from his son, Levin Joynes Chase. 
42 



Harvard Class of 1852 

Mr. Chase died on the eleventh of January, 1885, at Phila- 
delphia, leaving a widow and two sons, Joseph Stanwood and 
Levin Joynes Chase. A third son, Philander Chase, died in 
October, 1873. 

DAVID WILLIAMS CHEEVER 

David Williams Cheever was the son of Dr. Charles Au- 
gustus (H. C. 1813) and Adeline (Haven) Cheever, and was 
born at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on the thirtieth of 
November, 183 1. On his father's side he was descended from 
Ezekiel Cheever, 1 the famous schoolmaster, and he was the 
grandson of Dr. Abijah Cheever (H. C. 1779), one of the sur- 
geons in the Navy during the Revolutionary War. 

Preparing for college at home, under private tuition, he 
received a thorough grounding in the Classics, for which he 
always retained his fondness, as is shown in the selection of 
his Exhibition parts, for in October, 1850, he gave the Greek 
Version from a supposed " Speech of Spartacus to the Gladiator 
of Capua," and in May, 1852, he delivered a Dissertation on 
the "Neglect of Tragedy among the Romans," while during 
the last years of his life, although no longer able to use his 
eyes, he resumed the study of his favorite Latin authors. 
Cheever received a Detur in the Sophomore year. His Com- 
mencement part was a Dissertation on Thomas De Quincey, 
and he was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa. 

He traveled in Europe during 1853 and 1854, and Coolidge 
writes of meeting him in Paris ; returning, he began to attend 
the Harvard Medical School in the summer of 1854, and hav- 
ing studied for a term at the Boylston Medical School also, 
and passed a year as house pupil at the State Hospital at 
Rainsford Island, he received his degree in 1858 and imme- 
diately opened an office in Boston. 2 

On October ninth, i860, he married Anna C. Nichols, 
daughter of Thaddeus and Sarah C. Nichols. 

1 The mural tablet in memory of Ezekiel Cheever in the First Church in Boston 
was the gift of Dr. Cheever. It is one of a group of four, two of which commemorate 
Head Masters of the Boston Latin School, — Philemon Pormort and Ezekiel Cheever, 
the others commemorating Presidents of Harvard College, — John Leverett and 
Benjamin Wads worth. 

2 For many details in regard to Dr. Cheever's medical career we are indebted 
to Memorial Addresses by Dr. George W. Gay and Dr. J. Collins Warren which 
appeared in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal for 20 July, 1916. 

43 



Annals of the 

In i860 Dr. Cheever was appointed Demonstrator in 
Anatomy at the Harvard Medical School, a position which he 
held until 1868. The grandson of Dr. Abijah Cheever could 
not fail to feel that he must help his country in her hour of 
need, and as Acting Assistant Surgeon, he served from June 
second to August second, 1862, at the Judiciary Square Hos- 
pital, Washington, together with his classmate, Page, and 
other Harvard graduates. 

In 1864, on the opening of the Boston City Hospital, Dr. 
Cheever became visiting surgeon, the youngest man on the 
staff; for fifty- two years he gave to it of his time and thought, 
and the successful development of the institution is largely 
due to his wise foresight and skilful management. Master 
not only of the broader issues of his profession, but of detail 
as well, he was admirable both as surgeon and in the care 
which should follow after an operation, and he never forgot 
patients whom he had brought through a severe illness. His 
operations were brilliant, unusual and original, and deservedly 
procured him world-wide fame. 

In 1866 he was appointed Assistant Professor of Anatomy 
at the Harvard Medical School, and surgeon at the Boston 
Dispensary; in 1868 Acting Professor of Clinical Surgery 
and Editor of the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, and 
seven years later Professor of Clinical Surgery. 

Thoroughly practical, and a calm and convincing speaker, 
Dr. Cheever was most successful as a professor and lecturer. 
He possessed a gift for teaching and for interesting his pupils ; 
more, he was himself interested in his pupils, and in the 
progress of the younger men of his profession, never allowing 
an opportunity to pass for saying a kind word, and if he were 
forced to blame, doing it so gently that the reproof held no 
sting. In 1893, when Dr. Cheever retired to become Professor 
Emeritus, he was asked to deliver lectures on subjects of his 
own selection for the benefit of those who would fain have been 
his pupils, and the request was thereafter yearly repeated. 

In 1882 he had been appointed Professor of Surgery, and 
in 1888 he was President of the American Surgical Association. 
On several occasions he delivered lectures in Emergency 
courses, one of which was at Trinity Chapel, and another was 
one of a Lenten series at the Old South Church. He contributed 
largely to medical journals, publishing five volumes of Medical 

44 



Harvard Class of 1852 

and Surgical Reports of the City Hospital, many articles, 
among which are "Medicine as a Trade," "Medicine as a 
Profession" and "The New Surgery," and in 1894, a volume 
called "Lectures on Surgery." 

In the same year he received the degree of LL.D. from 
Harvard; and he was Overseer from 1896 to 1908. From 
1895 to 1907 he was a member of the Mount Auburn Cor- 
poration, becoming a convinced advocate of cremation; and 
in 1913 he was made Professor Emeritus of the City Hospital. 
He belonged to the Examiner Club, was Vice-President of the 
Saint Botolph Club, President of the Massachusetts Medical 
Society, a member of the Philadelphia College of Physicians 
and Surgeons, and a Fellow of the American Academy. 

In 1889 he gave $2,000 to the City Hospital, the interest of 
which was to be used for the purchase of surgical instruments; 
and at the time he retired from teaching he founded at Har- 
vard the Cheever Scholarship, — the first of its kind, for 
young men entering the Medical School. 

It is rare indeed, in this age of overstrained nerves, to see a 
man, especially one not of robust physique, of such perfect 
poise as Dr. Cheever. Calm, just, sagacious, far-seeing, he 
seemed in all the affairs of life as well as in those of his profes- 
sion a tower of strength. As has been written of another 
"good physician:" 

When he entered your family and sat by your bedside, his quick 
discernment of the minds, peculiar traits, tastes and feelings of your- 
self and all who surrounded you seemed like magic, yet with what 
delicacy and consideration did he exercise this gift! There were no 
intrusive questionings, unasked advice or concealed satire. Here was 
a friend who seemed to have read your thoughts, and was all ready 
to feel with and for you, to aid you morally as well as physically, 
clear off every obstacle in the way of your recovery and peace of 
mind, and tighten the bond that united you to those around you. 1 

And none who has felt his tenderness in the hour when even 
he could not arrest the dread Destroyer can ever forget it. 

Dr. Cheever's tastes were as simple as those of his New 
England forefathers. He enjoyed foreign travel and made 
several trips to Europe, accompanied always by some member 
of his family, but dearest of all, perhaps, were the simple 

1 Life of Dr. James Jackson by James Jackson Putnam, M.D., p. 184. 

45 



Annals of the 

pleasures of outdoor life, fishing, horseback riding and walk- 
ing. A thoroughly domestic man, his chief happiness was in 
his home. He had five children: David, born 19 August, 
1861, who died young; Alice, born 5 August, 1862; Helen, 
born 12 November, 1865; Marion, born 1 March, 1867; Ade- 
line, born 16 January, 1874; and David, born 25 June, 1876. 
The greatest sorrow of his life was the death of his third 
daughter, Marion, a girl of unusual loveliness and promise, 
who was drowned, in 1897, while bathing at their summer 
home at Cohasset. The tragedy robbed the place of its charm, 
and Dr. Cheever bought a farm in Dedham, where, in 1910, 
he celebrated his Golden Wedding. His youngest daughter, 
Adeline, married Dr. George Shattuck Whiteside (H. C. 1897) 
of Portland, Oregon, and every summer brought her three 
children home to rejoice the hearts of their grandparents. 

One great pleasure, not always granted to brilliant fathers, 
was Dr. Cheever's, — that of a son worthy to be the fourth 
physician of his name and line, for Dr. David Cheever (H. C. 
1897) is a true descendant of his medical sires. In 191 5 he 
accepted the position of head of the Second Harvard Unit for 
service in the French Hospital, and was thus away from home 
when his father died, but hard as it was for Dr. Cheever to 
miss the son of his right hand when the sands were running 
low, yet never for one hour did he regret that he had gone 
forth "to do his bit" for the suffering soldiers of France. Dr. 
Cheever rejoiced, too, that three Cheever grandsons, among 
them another Ezekiel, would carry on the good old name after 
his own race was run. 

Thoughtful of others to the last, calm, ready to go, the end 
came after a short illness on the twenty-seventh of December, 
I9IS- 1 

JOSEPH HODGES CHOATE 

Through the mists of more than thirty years, a little girl looks 
across the pews of the old Church of All Souls in New York 

1 On March twenty-first, 1918, the amphitheatre in the Boston City Hospital was 
dedicated to Dr. Cheever, the bronze memorial tablet, the gift of his son, being then 
unveiled. The exercises were in the charge of Dr. George W. Gay. The tablet, the 
work of the late Bela Lyon Pratt, bears a bas-relief of Dr. Cheever, with the words: 
"This Aphitheatre is dedicated to David Williams Cheever, 1831-1915, Surgeon 
to the Citv Hospital from its foundation to his death. 

46 



Harvard Class of 1852 

to gaze unweariedly upon a face which fills the measure of her 
childish fancy, even as the "Great Stone Face" charmed the 
boy in Hawthorne's tale. The face her eyes dwelt upon was 
that of a man in his early prime, striking not only for its 
beauty, but for the impress which it bore of rare strength, 
intellect and sweetness, the face of one who has more than 
realized the promise of his early youth and manhood, for it 
was that of Joseph Hodges Choate. 

He was the son of Dr. George (H. C. 181 8) and Margaret 
Manning (Hodges) Choate, and as he tells of himself in the 
Class Book — 

Descended from a long and noble line of coopers on the one side, 
and from New England farmers on the other, I was born on the 24th 
day of January, 1832, in the good old town of Salem. Here, in the 
grim days of the Puritans, as tradition says, an ancestor of mine, 
being arrested on a charge of witchcraft, narrowly escaped the fate 
of those who were found like him, to be " in league with the devil." In 
consideration of which circumstances Mr. Sibley has ventured the 
opinion that the " Class of '52 even so long ago came very near losing 
at least one of its members." 

Being the youngest of a large family of brothers, I, of course, went 
poorly clad and worse fed, which prevented my body becoming so 
robust and hearty as I could wish. Still I managed to keep along with 
the rest, and after passing three years in the Salem Latin School, 
under Master Carleton, the ablest and best teacher in the State, 
entered College as Freshman, where all four years I have chummed 
with my brother Bill. 

As yet no striking events have marked my career. College life 
has been to me as to so many others, a series, far too short, of trifling 
cares and abundant pleasures. 

Since the commencement of the Sophomore Year my religious 
education, which had before been sadly neglected, has been con- 
ducted with flattering success by my friend Collins, whose daily re- 
peated precepts have thus worked exceeding great results. 

Long flourish the Class of '52, whose interests are to none more 
dear than to their humble servant. 

Choate was one of the most popular, as well as the most 
brilliant, men of his Class. He was Secretary and Poet of the 
Hasty Pudding Club, President and Vice-President of the In- 
stitute of 1770, a member of the Alpha Delta Phi and the 
Harvard Natural History Society. 

He had parts in the different Exhibitions in October, 1850, 

47 



Annals of the 

giving the English version of the "Oration of Lycurgus against 
Socrates" and in May, 1852, delivering a Dissertation on 
"The Duke of Athens." 

Choate graduated fourth in his class, and at Commence- 
ment delivered the Latin Salutatory Oration. He was chosen 
President of the Class Supper, thus early foreshadowing his 
peculiar fitness for that office, and his scholarship of course 
entitled him to membership in the Phi Beta Kappa. He en- 
tered the Dane Law School in the September after his grad- 
uation, leaving two years later for the office of Hodges and 
Saltonstall of Boston, where he studied until his admission to 
the Suffolk Bar in 1855. It was while Choate was in Mr. 
Saltonstall's office that he conducted his first case, the account 
of which we give in his own words: 1 

I was in Mr. Saltonstall's office one Winter day when two farmers 
came in from Vermont with a law case, and they appealed to Mr. 
Saltonstall. They said they had a case — two cases in fact. Each of 
them had a carload of potatoes which had come down from Vermont 
to Boston the previous week, and on arrival they were found frozen 
absolutely solid, and they had commenced a suit against the railroad 
company which had brought them. Nobody knows better than Mr. 
Depew how open to attack railroad companies were in those days, 
and the question raised in the lawsuit was whether the destruction 
of the potatoes was owing to an act of God, or to the negligence of the 
railroad company. 

Mr. Saltonstall went into the matter, but finally said, "I don't 
think I can take that case — two carloads of rotten potatoes. No. 
But here's Choate; perhaps he'll take it." I was perfectly delighted 
to get it; I had never had a case before and I seized upon it at once. 
An arrangement was made whereby on the next day but one I should 
appear before a magistrate and take the evidence in that wonderfully 
important case. As it happened, on the intervening day my cousin, 
Mr. Rufus Choate, then the acknowledged head of the American 
Bar, who happened to be laid up with a lame knee, took me out in 
his carriage for a drive 'round through Cambridge and Brookline. I 
told him of my first retainer. He was tickled to death. He told me 
a great deal as to how to examine witnesses. But unhappily I forgot 
to ask him what the fee should be. I went to the magistrate's office 
at the time appointed, conscious that after consultation with the 
greatest lawyer in the country I was at least fully qualified for the 
service. I spent the day taking the evidence, protected the Deity 

1 Dinner in honour of The Honourable Joseph Hodges Choate by the Executive 
Committee of The Pilgrim Society of the United States, 27 January, 1917, page 41. 

48 



Harvard Class of 1852 

against the charge made by the railroad company, demonstrated by 
the evidence that it could not possibly have been the act of God, and 
that necessarily it must have been the negligence of the carrier; and 
the success of the suits seemed assured. 

On our way back from the place where the evidence was taken, to 
the office of Mr. Saltonstall, the question arose about my fee, and I 
was taken quite aback. "Well," I said, "I never had a fee; I don't 
know anything about fees. It has taken all day. The case seems 
to have been of a good deal of importance to you, and it seems to me 
that three dollars would not be excessive." (Laughter.) "Well," 
they said, "but there were only two carloads of potatoes; there 
were only two cases!" We talked it over on our way down from 
Vermont, and we concluded that a dollar a case would be about right. 
(Laughter.) I told them that I did n't wish to get up a reputation for 
excessive charges at the outset of my professional life and that I 
would take the two dollars. So they gave me two little gold dollars — 
you remember those of that day, very common then, but very diffi- 
cult to find now — and I took them with great delight. I think I 
must have spent one, and the other I gave to my class-mate, Darwin 
Ware, who was in the same position as myself and had never had a fee. 

I dismissed the subject from my mind, but a delightful bit of 
romance grew out of it, for forty-two years afterwards when Mr. Ware 
died, his widow, looking over his papers in his desk, found a little 
package marked on the outside, "Half of Joe Choate's first fee." 
(Laughter.) And there was the other gold dollar which I had not 
spent returned to me after so many years. Truly it was like bread 
cast upon the waters. And the romance of it is that Mr. Ware's 
widow had the grace to present the coin to my daughter, who wears it 
as a trophy or charm upon her watch guard to this day. (Applause.) 
At any rate, this, my first experience in actual practice, fixed in my 
mind an indelible standard of moderate charging, from which those 
who will, may believe that I never departed. 

Choate moved to New York in 1855, and after two months 
with the firm of Butler, Evarts and Southmayd, was admitted 
to the New York Bar in March, 1856, and began to practise 
Law the following year. Two years later he opened an office 
with William H. L. Barns, but the firm was dissolved at the 
end of a twelfth month, and he entered partnership with 
William M. Evarts and Charles F. Southmayd. On the six- 
teenth of October, 1861, Mr. Choate married Miss Caroline 
Dutcher Sterling, daughter of Frederick Sterling of Cleveland, 
Ohio. 

Mr. Choate was elected a member of the New England 

49 



Annals of the 

Society of New York soon after settling there; in 1865 he was 
chosen Vice-President, and in 1867 President, holding the 
office until 1876. During the evil days of the Civil War he 
did yeoman's service on the United States Sanitary Commission 
with the Rev. Dr. Henry W. Bellows, and then as always he has 
been associated with all the best interests of his adopted city. 
He was one of the Committee of Seventy which broke up the 
Tweed Ring in 1871, and his zeal in public affairs has often 
made him the advocate of his party on the stump, a wholly 
disinterested service. In 1894 he was President of the Con- 
stitutional Convention of the State of New York. 

Many of the cases with which Mr. Choate has been con- 
nected in his profession have become world famous. Prominent 
among them are the General Fitz-John Porter case, where he 
succeeded in securing the re-instatement of the General to his 
Army rank, and in connection with which he mastered, in an 
incredibly short time, the intricate history of the Bull Run 
Campaign of the Civil War. Equally remarkable was his 
personal deciphering of archaeological data necessary for his 
preparation for the Cesnola case which has now become matter 
of history. He was Counsel for the California Irrigation case, 
which was decided by the Supreme Court of the United States 
in 1896; and he was also Counsel in the Federal Income Tax 
case and won the suit of Mrs. Leland Stanford, whom the 
United States sued for $15,000,000. Always unruffled, courte- 
ous and self-possessed, he has been fitly named the "idol of the 
jurors," and his eminence is undisputed both as counsel and as 
jury lawyer. As an orator also, Mr. Choate reigns supreme, 
and the occasions on which he has been called to preside are 
legion. 

In 1899 Mr. Choate became our Ambassador to the Court 
of St. James, and remained there until 1905. Surely none has 
ever filled the office with more ability and dignity, nor done 
more to cement the bond which binds us to the Mother Country. 
Long before his ambassadorship his brilliant sayings had be- 
come classic, and there are few which are not already known 
to history, but they will bear much repetition, and we cannot 
refrain from quoting once more his pleasantly patriotic reply 
to Queen Alexandra's question as to whether Americans laid 
much stress on the superstitious import of the number 13, 
"The eternal foundations of our Republic were built on the 

50 



Harvard Class of 1852 

number 13." In 1904 the freedom of the City of Edinburgh 
was presented to Mr. Choate in recognition of his great elo- 
quence, high public gifts and the valued service he had rendered 
in promoting kindly feeling and warm friendship between the 
people of Great Britain and those of the Western Hemisphere. 
He was also elected Honorary Bencher of the Middle Temple 
in 1905, and his resignation as Ambassador in the same year 
was unwillingly accepted by the President of the United States 
and regretted by King Edward VII. The tact and gracious 
charm of Mrs. Choate's personality have been a powerful aid 
to her husband, and a well-known Englishman who visited 
this country during their residence in England was heard to 
say, "The wife of your popular Ambassador is a great social 
general, universally popular and wonderfully tactful;" and 
surely no wife could ask a sweeter tribute than Mr. Choate's 
answer to the question "if you couldn't be Joe Choate, who 
would you be?" "Oh! I should want to be Mrs. Choate's 
second husband." It was during his ambassadorship that he 
presented the beautiful stained glass window as a memorial 
of John Harvard to Saint Saviour's Church at Southwark in 
which the Founder of the College had been christened. 

Since his return to New York Mr. Choate has resumed the 
practice of his profession. In 1907 he was appointed the first 
United States Delegate to the Second International Peace 
Conference at the Hague. 

The honors and degrees which have been heaped upon him 
are almost beyond count. In addition to the degree of LL.D. 
from Harvard in 1888 he has received the same degree from 
twelve other Colleges. 1 He is a member of the American 
Philosophical Society, Honorary Member of The Colonial 
Society of Massachusetts, Corresponding Member of the 
Massachusetts Historical Society, Fellow of the American 
Academy of Arts and Sciences, Foreign Honorary Fellow of 
the Royal Society of Literature, London, President of the New 
England Society of New York, already mentioned, of the Union 
League Club and Harvard Club, of the New York City and 
American Bar Associations and Harvard Law School Association, 
Trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and of the Museum 
of Natural History, since the foundation of each, Governor 

1 For an enumeration of Mr. Choate's degrees, see the Harvard Quinquennial 
Catalogue, which Mr. Choate often said was "my frequent study." 

51 



Annals of the 

(since 1879) °f t ^ ie New York Hospital. In 1893 he was made 
a Trustee of the Peabody Education Fund, and was President 
of the Board from November, 1910. In 1878-80 he was Vice- 
President of the Harvard Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, and in 
1880-84 President, succeeding Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes. 

In addition to his many and varied interests Mr. Choate has 
found time also for literary work. He has published a volume 
of his American and one of his English Addresses and the 
Stafford Lectures which he delivered at Princeton on the 
Hague Conferences. He has written also a Memoir of Rufus 
Choate as well as Memoirs of Leverett Saltonstall and William 
Crowninshield Endicott for The Colonial Society of Massa- 
chusetts. 

We can truly say that Mr. Choate is — not the most popular, 
for the feeling which he inspires strikes far deeper than mere 
popularity — but the best beloved man in the city of New 
York. From the old days of College life he has ever held the 
magic key which opens all hearts with the spell of his genial 
sympathy and loving kindness. Did a friend sail for Europe, 
it was "Joe" who ran in to cheer up the lonesome parents; did 
he make a visit, young and old in the household mourned his 
departure and the canary was christened "Joe" in his honour. 
Letters from classmates show how the writers, — men of 
widely different character and interests, went to him with all 
their hopes and joys and fears, sure of his unfailing sympathy, 
and they could indeed say of him: 

"I never crossed your threshold with a grief 
But that I went without it, never came 
Heart-hungry but you fed me, eased the blame, 
And gave the sorrow solace and relief." 

Not of great things alone but of the "little unremembered 
acts of kindness and of love" he is the master. 

Mr. Choate has had five children — the oldest, Ruluff 
Sterling Choate, born 24 September, 1864, entered Harvard 
in the Class of 1887. Like his father he was brilliant and of 
great promise. He died in New York, 5 April, 1884. In his 
memory Mr. Choate founded the Scholarship which bears his 
name. 

His other children are George; Josephine Sterling, born 9 
January, 1869, died 20 July, 1896; Mabel; and Joseph Hodges, 

52 



Harvard Class of 1852 

Junior, who graduated from Harvard in 1897 and practices 
Law in New York. 

Amid the almost overwhelming pressure of public and pro- 
fessional life Mr. Choate yet always finds time to hold out a 
helping hand to all who come to him for aid, to lend a willing 
ear to all who ask him for sympathy. The flood of letters 
which are poured in upon him are always answered, many in 
his own beautiful script; and neither time nor change has ever 
dimmed the rare loyalty of his friendships, nor his love for 
his Alma Mater. 

The Executive Committee of The Pilgrims of the United 
States, of which Mr. Choate is President, gave him a dinner on 
January twenty-seventh, 19 17, at the Union League Club in 
honour of his eighty-fifth birthday. A distinguished gathering 
indeed, which furnished speeches from many brilliant men, 
and concluded with an inimitable one from the guest of honour, 
which it is needless to say took the palm. We have already 
quoted from it, but we must include Mr. Choate's modest 
allusion to the honours heaped upon him: 

I can only say concerning my eighty-five years of life . . . that 
I have had a great deal more than I deserved. On my real birthday, 
on Wednesday last, my little grandchildren came to see the flowers. 
They could find nothing else but flowers; there was no vacant spot 
thatwas notcovered with flowers. Oneof the little girls said, Grandpa, 
I should think you would feel almost ashamed to be so popular. 
Now that little girl struck the very idea I had been struggling with 
all that day and had found it impossible to express, — so much more 
than I deserved. 

Mr. Choate was the youngest Vice-President of the Harvard 
Alumni Association in 1869, and uttered a singularly ac- 
curate prophecy in regard to the future success of Eliot, then 
at the age of thirty-six just entering upon his Presidency. On 
being elected to the office of President of the Alumni Associ- 
ation he said he considered the latter the highest gift in the 
power of the American people to bestow. 

There can be no truer description of Mr. Choate than the 
one which he himself gave in his tribute to Phillips Brooks : 

Well do I remember, as if it were but yesterday, when my eyes 
first rested upon him, as he entered the Chapel at Harvard College, 
in the Freshman Class forty-four years ago — a tall and slender strip- 
ling, towering above all his companions, with that magnificent head, 

53 



Annals of the 

that majestic face, already grave and serious, but with great brown eyes 
lighting it, beaming with brotherly love and tenderness. And from 
that hour to this he has been the boast, the delight of the College. 

Long ago Horatio Alger wrote that none of the Class "lived 
history as fast as our brilliant classmate Choate, whom we can 
never make up our minds to spare. I have fixed upon him as 
the last survivor of the Class." 

True apostle of the "two noblest things, which are sweetness 
and light," his are the 

"Divine ideas below, 
Which always find us young 
And always keep us so." 1 

Alas! that Alger's prophecy, and Mr. Choate's own wish 
that he might become Harvard's oldest living graduate, 2 were 
not to be fulfilled. But his even more heartfelt desire was 
granted, — that in the great Cause of our present War, he 
might see his own Country allied with the Motherland, whose 
last vestige of bitterness against her rebellious Daughter had 
vanished under the sunshine of his genial ambassadorship. 
He lived to greet the Envoys of the Allies with the gracious 
charm peculiarly his own, and peculiar to himself, and then, 
still in his golden prime, his bark put out to sea. 

Joseph Hodges Choate died at his house in New York on 
the fourteenth of May, 1917. 3 

WILLIAM GARDNER CHOATE 

William Gardner Choate was the son of George and Mar- 
garet (Manning) Choate and tells his story in the Class Book 
as follows: 

I can boast no long line of illustrious ancestors. But a little more 
than two centuries ago (1640) there appeared one John Choate who 

1 The foregoing sketch of Mr. Choate was written during his lifetime from material 
partly supplied by himself. 

2 Such, however, was not his desire in early manhood, for in a letter to Williamson, 
dated 3 September, 1856, he writes: "Our 87 are now but 83 and passing on very fast, 
but my great hope in that regard is that I may not be left among the last." 

3 For an account of The Choate Memorial Fellowship, established by members 
of the Harvard Club of New York after Mr. Choate's death, see p. 429, -post. 

54 



Harvard Class of 1852 

settled on the outmost limits of the Village of Chebacco in the an- 
cient town of Agawam (now Ipswich), Massachusetts. In this ob- 
scure corner of the Colony it is certain that he lived and died. . . . 
Certain it is that he settled down here in the wilderness, gathered a 
family about him, labored and died. But for any further account of 
his body, mind, or estate all the researches that the writer has made 
have thus far proved unavailing. The immediate descendants of 
this first ancestor for several generations are more or less obscure. 
The meagre outlines of their humble lives, eked out here and there 
by a family or a local tradition, is written only in the family Bible 
and the parish records and on the mouldering stones of the old village 
churchyard "Where the rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep." 
They were all farmers. None strayed from the fold of the old home- 
stead. Or, if one more daring than the rest ventured to emigrate 
he was never heard of more. No success appears to have attended 
the efforts of any of the race in early times to break away from the 
humble calling in which they and their fathers were born and bred. 
One poor fellow, Benjamin, 1 a long time ago, took to the Church. 
It was doubtless well meant, but he died young. Nay, in reward for 
this rash attempt, he seems to have been divorced from his very 
name and kindred for the Triennial has ever since transmitted his 
name shorn of the final (e). Moreover, they were all rigid Puritans, 
brought up strictly and practically to the liberal interpretation of 
the Scripture, for they "were fruitful and multiplied" till after a 
few generations about a quarter part of the inhabitants of their 
native town bore the family name. . . . There is an old tradition 
that the island which for more than a hundred years was the seat 
of my ancestors, received its name of Hog Island from the fact that 
the Choates (Shotes) were found there on the first settlement of 
the country. Now these two words are identical in sound if only 
the (Ch) be pronounced soft as not improperly it might have been 
pronounced two centuries ago. Nor is this derivation forced or ob- 
scure. . . . There is one circumstance further that may be men- 
tioned in support of the same opinion. My brother Joe and myself 
when very small boys had an unnatural passion for digging large 
and deep holes in the earth to the great detriment of our father's 
garden. This last circumstance is perhaps trifling in itself yet it 
is strong in confirmation of the probable existence of some such 
connection and sympathy with our Mother Earth more direct and 
immediate than usually exists. It is true that the spell seems at 
last broken and wellnigh dissolved, for individuals of the last two 
or three generations have emigrated not only without disaster but 
even with advantage. 

1 Benjamin Choat graduated in the Class of 1703. 

55 



Annals of the 

My mother's descent is more illustrious than that of my father. 
It would be very tedious, were I to go into the details of the suc- 
cession of her ancestors. Suffice it to say that so far as I know they 
have always lived in old Salem and, for aught I know, they may 
have been great among their fellow coopers, but unfortunately their 
history has never been written. 

They seem however to have stuck to their casks one after another 
in unbroken succession till my grandfather's time with as tenacious 
a grasp as that with which my paternal ancestors held onto their 
ploughs. 

I have been told that I was born August 30th, 1830, but the events 
of my life for some time subsequent to that event are entirely for- 
gotten. I have been told, however, that I was a poor and sickly in- 
fant not worth raising. But there is nothing during this early period 
that I remember or ever heard of that is worthy of note in this place. 
At seven years of age I first went to a man's school. The teacher 1 
was one of that class of schoolmasters, now happily for boys, fast 
disappearing, whose rule was a reign of terror and whose only means 
of persuasion were his fist, his rule, and his cowhide. The school- 
house, too, was of a description that has now gone out of date in this 
part of the country. It had neither blackboard nor recitation room. 
Long, straight, hard benches without any backs stretched from 
one side of the room to the other. The box stove on which the 
Master was ejecting a continuous stream of tobacco juice as he sat 
behind it, whipping his boots as he heard the classes recite, the 
dingy, smoky walls, the small, low and dirty windows are no longer 
tolerated in the public schools of the cities of New England. The 
discipline, too, was of the same style, harsh, old and puritanical. 
The last regular exercise of the day was always the flogging of such 
unhappy urchins as the monitors had marked down as victims. 
And that the monitorial system might be the more successful, the 
monitors were given to understand that they themselves must fill 
out the number, if they failed to report as many delinquents as the 
Master felt inclined to flog. As may be supposed, this system worked 
admirably and the Master seldom failed to spend the last half hour 
in a manner most in accordance with his taste and feelings. Then, 
too, there were exquisitely ingenious devices of torture, such as 
lifting small boys up by the ears under pretence of showing them 
London, locking up still smaller boys in desks, threats of all sorts 
of mutilation, whipping the last boy in from recess, flogging half 
the school, taken by alternate benches, long disputations and opinions 
of medical men on the impossibility of breaking bones with the cow- 
hide and divers other, besides that most cunning arrangement for 

1 Abner Brooks (Martin, Life of Joseph H. Choate, i. 34, 35). 
56 



Harvard Class of 1852 

the older boys called "taking the stand" which served the double 
purpose of tightening the trousers over the offending part and, like 
the French Guillotine, of dispatching many victims at once — a 
very important object on account of the great number of the con- 
demned. There were particular points, too, on which the Master 
was peculiarly sensitive. The luckless urchin, beginning his gram- 
mar, who pronounced Gender with a hard (G) or the word partici- 
ple in any less than four syllables, had cause to rue the day wherein 
he was born. All this was set off by a long prayer every morning 
(for the Master stood high in the Church) and by long moral essays 
on lying and other vices and on the way in which he himself used to 
behave at school when a boy. My recollections of this period are 
curious rather than agreeable. 

My subsequent teachers, Rufus Putnam of the English High 
School and Oliver Carlton 1 of the Latin School, are among the 
best of men and the best of teachers, and to them I feel much 
indebted for what rays of light have thus far reached my under- 
standing. 

One of the earliest recollections I have is of an ineffectual attempt 
to learn the time of day from the clock and my whole life has been 
an unsuccessful effort to learn the masterous art of spelling. 

There is one point on which my personal experience directly con- 
tradicts public opinion. It is generally supposed, or at least often 
said, that childhood and boyhood are happy periods of life. I am 
convinced that this is a popular fallacy. My existence was always 
embittered in winter by falls on the ice and especially by snow-balls, 
for some of the hardest of which I am indebted to my friends and 
classmates Oliver and D. E. Ware, and in the summer by other 
missiles, as green apples and horse chestnuts. Then, too, I had no 
skill in any of the games. I tried in vain to learn the new-fashioned 
way of playing marbles that was introduced during my school 
days and which consists in throwing the marble from the end in- 
stead of from the middle of the forefinger. In all games of 
ball I had the misfortune to be what is called among boys, not 
very elegantly, to be sure, but expressively, butter-fingered. And 
when I add to all this that I was picked upon by three huge broth- 
ers and always tormented because I was fat, moody and obsti- 
nate, even then my grievances are by no means told, for I 
had in addition about a dozen nicknames such as Tim, Old Poz, 
Duffy, Chuckey, Ipsenaw and the like. I look back upon these 
times, therefore, with no very strong desire for a repetition of their 
delights. 

1 For a brief notice of Oliver Carlton, see Publications of The Colonial Society of 
Massachusetts, v. 364. 

57 



Annals of the 

But the great event of my life thus far was in August, 1848, 
when I applied for admission to H. C. and, as good luck would have 
it, was admitted into the great and glorious — the model class of 
'52. These four years have glided quietly and happily away, each 
more pleasant than the last. I have found many good friends whom 
I trust I shall keep for life. I always lived in college and chummed 
with my brother Joe. Though I escaped being clawed by the crows- 
feet of the Freshmen year I was among the first to follow my enthu- 
siastic friend Page into the Oxford cap delusion of 1849 and may 
add here that I spent a large part of the senior year in company with 
Norris and others sketching the likenesses of my classmates and 
drawing landscapes by aid of the new machinery and the approved 
method of M. Richter. I have thus far seen little of the world, the 
extreme southern part of my wanderings being Blue Hill, Milton. I 
was run for the Jackknife, 1 but for want of concentration was de- 
feated by my friend Chauncey Wright by a few votes. It is pleasant 
to think that this rivalry has not in the least disturbed the friendly 
relations that have always subsisted between that gentleman and 
myself. 

The first scholar in his class, "Bill" Choate was of course 
a member of the Phi Beta Kappa. He was President and Re- 
cording Secretary of the Harvard Natural History Society, 
Chorister of the Hasty Pudding Club, a member of the In- 
stitute of 1770 and of the Alpha Delta Phi. He received a 
Sophomore Detur, contributed a part to the Exhibitions of 
October, 1850, and 1851, and delivered the English Oration at 
Commencement, being thus the Valedictorian. 

After graduating from the Dane Law School, in 1854, 
Choate was for a twelvemonth in the office of Phillips and 
Gillis of Salem, 2 as a student, and from the first gave promise 
of his ability and usefulness, for one of his classmates recalls 
having been told by Mr. Gillis that when Choate left, on his 
admission to the Bar, they did not know "how to get along 
without him." 

Having passed through the rite of admission, at Newbury- 
port, in September, 1855, Choate presently opened an office 
in Salem, and Mr. Phillips having become Attorney-General 
of Massachusetts, he accepted the position of his assistant, 
his business being transacted in the offices at the State House, 
whither he traveled back and forth daily from Salem. Choate 

1 The Jack-knife was awarded to the plainest boy in the class. See page 272, -post. 
s Stephen Henry Phillips, H. C. 1842: James Andrew Gillis, H. C. 1849. 

58 



Harvard Class of 1852 

was elected Commissioner of Insolvency for Essex County in 
1857, and a member of the Salem Common Council; he was for 
two years its President and thereby ex officio a member of the 
School Committee. But the old town, dear to the hearts of 
her sons for the sake of her associations and traditions, offered 
little scope for professional opportunity and expansion, and 
in 1865 Mr. Choate determined to seek a larger field, and 
moved in February of that year to New York. 

Within a few months he was admitted to the New York Bar, 
and formed a partnership under the name of Prichard, Choate 
and Smith, 1 acting as the court member of the firm, and de- 
voting himself largely to Admiralty practice. In 1878 he was 
appointed Judge of the United States District Court for the 
Southern District of New York. Unfortunate indeed is it 
for a country when the emoluments of her public offices are 
so inadequate as to prevent their being held by those whose 
judgment and acumen would reflect most honor thereon. 
Such was the case with the District Bench during Judge 
Choate's incumbency. An effort by the Bar to have the 
salary raised proved unsuccessful, and in 1881 he resigned, 
because, as he says, "I could not live on the salary." He was 
succeeded by his classmate Addison Brown. In 1903 the 
members of the Southern District presented the Court with 
portraits of Choate and Brown. In the address made on the 
occasion, Judge Adams refers to Judge Choate in the follow- 
ing words : 

Judge Choate had retired from the bench when I came to prac- 
tise in New York. . . . The atmosphere he created by his kindly 
nature, as well as his judicial work was still fresh in the memory of 
all the practitioners in the court and especially of those within the 
Admiralty circle, so that every one becoming identified with that 
practice, as I did to some extent, was quickly affected by it, and 
to-day the student of Admiralty law cannot fail to be impressed and 
aided by the strength and thoroughness of Judge Choate's opinions, 
which, fortunately, remain on record. 

Having retired from the Bench, Judge Choate formed a 
partnership with Samuel L. M. Barlow, William D. Shipman 
and Joseph LaRocque, the firm being at the present day 
Choate, LaRocque and Mitchell. 

1 William Prichard: Duncan Smith. 

59 



Annals of the 

The legal ability of Judge Choate cannot be overestimated. 
No one has ever surpassed, few have approached him in 
forensic power, and he is, with reason, regarded as the Dean 
of the New York Bar. 

In 1869 Judge Choate wrote the Class Secretary that he 
had "no personal history," a deficiency which he retrieved 
in 1870 by marrying, on June twenty-ninth, Mary Lyman 
Atwater, daughter of Caleb and Elizabeth Lydia (Clarke) 
Atwater of Wallingford, Connecticut. They have no children. 
In 1896 they celebrated their silver wedding anniversary 
at their summer place, "Rosemary," Wallingford, Connec- 
ticut, their beautiful old house having been built by Mrs. 
Choate's grandfather. Nearby is a preparatory school for 
boys in which they both are greatly interested, the boys be- 
ing allowed the use of the Choate domain for their play- 
ground. It was founded by Judge Choate's friend and 
kinsman, Mark Pitman (Bowdoin College 1859) who was 
the first Principal, and who insisted on naming it the 
Choate School. 

In 1865 Judge Choate was one of the founders of the New 
York Harvard Club, of which he has been President, and he 
was also one of the leading New York lawyers, through whose 
efforts the Bar Association of the City of New York was 
formed, with the purpose, successfully carried into execution, 
of unseating corrupt judges. Of this also he has been Presi- 
dent; and on his removal to New York he immediately be- 
came a member of the New England Society. 

In politics Judge Choate was originally an old-time Whig, 
later voting with the Republican Party, until he became a 
Mugwump at the time of the Cleveland Campaign. When 
the Republican Party had learned its lesson, he returned to 
its fold. 

Judge Choate is an able and easy writer; among other papers 
he has prepared for the New York Bar Association a Memorial 
of his classmates, Anderson and Judge Brown. 

Quiet and retiring, blest with the delicious Choate sense of 
humor, one who has never neglected the opportunities for 
good to his fellow-men which have come across his path, he 
is a man of great depth of learning, as well as of sterling char- 
acter and of the highest ideals. 1 

1 Judge Choate died in Wallingford, Connecticut, 14 November, 1920. 

60 



Harvard Class of 1852 

Well may old Harvard be proud when she can send forth to 
the world from one class two such men as William and Joseph 
Choate — 

. . . full of power; 
As gentle; liberal minded, great, 
Consistent; wearing all that weight 
Of learning lightly like a flower. 



JOSIAH COLLINS, JUNIOR 

Josiah Collins was the son of Josiah and Mary (Riggs) 
Collins, and was born on the nineteenth of July, 1830. His 
home was at Scuppernong, Washington County, North Caro- 
lina, where his father was a man of wealth and position. Hav- 
ing prepared for college under private tutors, Collins entered 
Harvard in 1849 in the Sophomore year. He was a member of 
the Harvard Natural History Society and the Institute of 
1770, participating in the Exhibition of May, 1851, and de- 
livering an English oration at Commencement. As he grad- 
uated third in the Class, he was of course in the Phi Beta 
Kappa. During the remainder of the year 1852 and part of 
1853 Collins studied Law, being, he says in the Class Book, 
"nominally at the Law School, but shooting bears at Scup- 
pernong;" and in June, 1854, on account of trouble with his 
eyes, he sailed for Europe. He remained abroad for eighteen 
months, and Upham writes from Paris of catching a glimpse 
of "unalterable Josiah" in the distance. 

On returning from Europe, as the trouble with his eyes con- 
tinued, Collins set forth on horseback in company with one 
of his brothers, riding over eleven hundred miles through the 
mountains of North Carolina and Virginia. After a few 
months of study at a private Law School, he established him- 
self in practise at Edenton, North Carolina, but with the out- 
break of the war he rose to the call of the South and served it 
throughout the struggle. Collins was one of the many to 
whom the victory of the Union arms spelled "Tragedy." The 
war over, he tried to resume his law practice at Raleigh, but 
was unsuccessful, and in 1876 an attack of typhoid fever 
obliging him to give up any attempt at business, he moved 
with his family to the house of his mother-in-law at Hillsbor- 
ough, North Carolina, dying there on the fourteenth of February, 

61 



Annals of the 

1890. Bereft of fortune, shattered in health, broken in hope, 
the loss of the Cause he loved was to Collins worse than a death- 
blow, but the bitterness of the defeat left no sting in his re- 
lations towards the friends and classmates of his happier years. 

I received the day before yesterday the printed circular with 
reference to the Class Supper, and answer as soon as I can. I wish 
I could say it was my intention to attend the said supper, but alas, 
I am not able. It is one of the things I should most especially like to do ; 
I long to meet the class once more and to revive the old memories and 
associations. I am still constrained to recall the man who ate the skin 
of his onion on his bread instead of butter, and to exclaim with him 
that poverty, though no disgrace, is a very serious inconvenience. If 
you should happen to know of anybody who wishes a private tutor, or 
a coachman, or a bootblack, please mention my name, as I think myself 
competent to fill any of those three positions, that is, at low wages, 

he wrote in 1877 to the Class Secretary, and in 1886 he said, 

I would give a great deal if I had it to see the old place and meet the 
old Class once more. 

Please remember me particularly to Coolidge and Arnold, how 
familiar all three of your names sound, 

we read in another of his letters to Denny. 

You all sat so near me in our division that in some of the recitation 
rooms I could touch all three of you with my hand. Give my es- 
pecial greeting to any of the Class who may enquire for me, and think 
of me still, though so far away, as your classmate. 

Collins married Sarah Rebecca Jones of Hillsborough, North 
Carolina. They had six children; Mary Riggs, Josiah J., Cad- 
wallader, Rebecca, Elizabeth Jones, and Alethea Collins. His 
two sons, Cadwallader and Josiah, are lawyers, practising at 
Norfolk, Virginia, and Seattle, Washington, respectively. 

ALFRED WELLINGTON COOKE 

Son of Josiah Wellington and Sarah (Hancock) Cooke. He 
was born in Cambridge, 25 August, 1830, and died in Weston, 
Massachusetts, 3 August, 1852. 

From Palmer's invaluable Necrology we glean the record 
of Cooke's blameless and too short life. He attended the 
Cambridge High School until two years before he entered 
College, leaving there in 1846 to finish his preparatory course 

62 



PLATE IV 





■ 




COLLI NS COOKE 

COOLI DGE 
CROWLEY CURTIS 



Harvard Class of 1852 

at the Classical School of Edmund Burke Whitman (H. C. 
1838). Shortly before entering college he had a hemorrhage 
of the lungs from which he seemed wholly to recover, but the 
disease was only temporarily arrested, appearing again in his 
Senior year, and by Class Dayhewas too ill to take partin the ex- 
ercises. He received a Sophomore Detur; at the May Exhibition 
of 185 1 he gave a Latin Version of Mr. Everett's Speech before 
a Committee of the Legislature on furnishing aid to the College, 
and in May, 1852, a Latin Oration De Artis Music ae apud 
Graecos Studio. At Commencement a Dissertation on "The 
Alexandrian Philology" was assigned to him, which he was too 
weak to deliver. He was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa. 

From early boyhood his had been a deeply religious nature, 
and early, too, he showed great talent for music and painting. 
When not absorbed in his College work he was always busy 
with pencil or music. He played on organ and piano, for he 
was never idle, and his great longing was to visit Italy and 
perfect himself in his beloved arts. He often exclaimed, "I 
shall certainly see Italy before I die," but the dream was not 
to be fulfilled. In spite of fast increasing weakness during the 
last months of his College life his interest and perseverence in 
his studies never nagged, even after he was too ill to attend 
recitations. Palmer says: "Never was a more worthy example 
of scholarly devotion shown than was displayed by him in 
feebly going to and from his College exercises when all could 
see that the hand of death was already upon him;" but no 
physical weakness could daunt his brave and aspiring spirit, 
and to life's last hour he sought the highest. 

Only a few days before his death he received an appoint- 
ment as teacher of music in a southern Academy, for which 
he had applied in the hope that his health might be restored 
by a year in a warm climate, and rest from all mental exertion. 
In manner Cooke was cordial, gentle, kind and unassuming, 
and faithful and loyal in friendship. The picture of him in 
the Class Book shows a delicate face, rather serious, full of 
purpose, with a dreamy look in the eyes as if he already caught 
a glimpse of the far off-land he was so soon to see. 

All that life contains of torture, toil and treason, 
Shame, dishonour, death, were to him but a name; 
Here, a boy, he dwelt through all the singing season 
And ere the day of sorrow departed as he came. 

63 



Annals of the 

HORACE HOPKINS COOLIDGE 

Among the many gifts with which his fairy godmother en- 
dowed Horace Coolidge were a genial charm of manner, a rare 
tenderness and spirit of loving kindness, and a loyalty in 
friendship which made him dearly loved by all who knew him. 
His name, often on the pens of his classmates in their letters of 
College days, is rarely mentioned without some affectionate 
epithet, — "Coolidge, dear fellow" — or "dear Coolidge," 
showing that he held an especial place in their hearts. 

He was the son of Amos and Louisa (Hopkins) Coolidge, 
and was born in Boston, February eleventh, 1832. He was a 
delicate and an only child, and the death of his mother when he 
was fifteen made his boyhood a lonely one. He passed some 
years of school life under what he calls the "paternal care" of 
J. F. Thayer, Esq., and prepared for College at the Boston 
Latin School. 

During the Freshman year he was elected into the Harvard 
Lodge of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, to which he 
contributed a poem, and he was later a member of the Alpha 
Delta Phi, the Hasty Pudding Club, the Knights Punch Bowl, 
the Harvard Natural History Society and the Institute of 1770. 

For the Class Supper of 12 July, 1850, he wrote an Ode 1 to 
be sung to the tune of Auld Lang Syne which gives amusing 
allusions to the members of the Faculty. During the Senior 
year Coolidge and Dana roomed together in Holworthy 22 
in the "East Entry," long remembered by the happy band 
who passed their last college days there together. 

A Detur was awarded him in the Sophomore year; he de- 
livered an English metrical Version of Victor Hugo's Retour 
de U Empereur at the Exhibition of May, 1851; and at that of 
May, 1852, an English Poem, called "The Stone Face." At 
Commencement he had a Dissertation on "The Travels and 
The Traveller of Goldsmith"; and he was a member of the 
Phi Beta Kappa. 

Early in his college career Coolidge developed an especial 
interest in elocution, and his fine voice and agreeable per- 
sonality lent charm to his decided talent for oratory. 

In September, 1852, he entered the Dane Law School, he 
and Joseph H. Choate chumming together, but the pleasant 

1 Printed in the account of the Class Suppers, p. 333, post. 
64 



Harvard Class of 1852 

association was destined to be of short duration, for Coolidge 
was attacked by a weakness of the eyes and was ordered to 
Europe for complete rest and change. 

He sailed in the American Eagle on December third, 1852, 
and passed nearly two years in foreign travel, often meeting 
others of the Class in his journeyings, and was joined, in 
June, 1853, by Waring. In March of that year he wrote to 
Williamson of his delight at receiving a packet of letters from 
their especial band of cronies: 

"The other Collegians I talk with never feel the enthusiasm 
that our Class feels," he says: 

I believe the old boast that there never was such a Class and I be- 
lieve that never were warmer friendships found than in the "Old 
East Entry.'" The old College days come back to me often, and 
ever with a new gilding, and I take out your Class Poem and it 
seems more beautiful than ever; 

and on the fifth of December he writes to Joe Choate from 
Leipsic to remind him of their old pledge of Holworthy days 
to drink one another's healths at the New Year, "no matter 
how far asunder they may be." The same letter brings before 
us the change of postal customs, for Coolidge comments some- 
what lugubriously on having to pay $1.40 postage on a Col- 
lege catalogue and he gives an account of their way of passing 
a German Sunday, which evidently shocks a youth brought 
up in Sabbath-keeping New England: and he "almost wishes 
he could hear that old College bell ring instead of the clatter 
of carriages." 

In another letter he tells of the manner in which the Anni- 
versary of the Reformation was celebrated as a holiday in 
Leipsic, with a detailed description of the procession of the 
University dignitaries and the costumes of the latter, and it 
is amusing to note that the scarlet robes and sceptres and 
the Marshals with their brilliant sashes, carrying drawn 
swords, seem to this descendant of the Puritans very thea- 
trical and "what we should designate as snoopsy." 

September, 1854, found Coolidge once more among the college 
surroundings so dear to his heart, at the Dane Law School. 
Leaving there in January, 1856, he entered the office of Brooks 
and Ball, and on receiving his degree of LL.B. opened an 
office of his own in Boston. On the twenty-seventh of October, 

65 



Annals of the 

1857, he was married to Eunice Maria Weeks, daughter of 
William A. and Eunice Maria (Faxon) Weeks of Boston. 

The excellence of his legal acquirements is shown by the 
fact that he was Master in Chancery and also a Commissioner 
in Insolvency. He followed his political inclination and was 
in the Legislature for five years, and for three successive 
years, 1870, 1871 and 1872, he was President of the Senate. 
It was in 1865, while in the House, in conjunction with Francis 
E. Parker, then in the Senate, that he warmly espoused and 
aided the passage of Ware's measure concerning the election 
of the Harvard Board of Overseers. 

His charm of manner, unfailing kindness and consideration, 
with his ready command of language and ease in speaking, 
of course made him universally popular, and in demand for 
occasions of every sort. 

While still in his prime, however, Mr. Coolidge gradually 
withdrew from public life, and found his greatest recreation 
in his library, giving especial study to English poetry, and to 
French history. An accident to his knee, from which he 
never recovered, made him almost a prisoner during the last 
ten years of his life, but his enforced inaction never affected 
the sunny cheerfulness of his disposition. He was able to 
enjoy driving, and on a tour through the Berkshire Hills was 
amused to find in the hotel at North Adams the chair which 
he had used as President of the Senate. 

None of the eight members of the Dining Club of '52 found 
greater pleasure in the monthly reunions than he. His faith 
in the Class of '52, his deep love for Old Harvard, for his 
classmates and for the old days passed in the shadow of the 
College elms, never knew change nor wavering, and the closing 
stanza of his Ode for the Supper of 1850 was prophetic of his 
own loyalty: 

When e'er in after life we meet, 

And grasp a classmate's hand, 
The thoughts of earlier days shall rise 

At Memory's glad command. 

Let us then strive our Class to bind 

In friendship firm and true, 
That after years sweet thoughts may bring 

Of the Class of '52. 
66 



Harvard Class of 1852 

Mr. Coolidge died at his house in Boston on the third of 
February, 191 2. He was survived by his wife, and by three 
children, — William Williamson Coolidge (H. C. 1879), Louise, 
now Mrs. Alfred Dennis Hurd, and Alice, who has since 
died. Another son, Charles Cummings Coolidge, died some 
years before his father. 

JOHN COLMAN CROWLEY 

John Aloysius Colman Crowley, as he was known during 
his college days and until his manhood, was the son of Daniel 
and Mary Colman Crowley. His parents were of Irish birth, 
the name having been originally O'Crowley, and emigrated to 
America in 183 1. Their only surviving child, John, was born 
in Boston in the year after their coming, on August twenty- 
second. Daniel Crowley met with success in the new country, 
and in 1834 bought land in East Boston, where he built one of 
the early houses and became familiarly known as "King 
Crowley" from "his well-directed energy, acquisition of prop- 
erty, and acknowledged supremacy over so many residents of 
the Island." 1 

The son fitted for college at Holy Cross College at Worces- 
ter. At Harvard he was a member of the Harvard Natural 
History Society, and was, perhaps, the first Irish Roman 
Catholic to graduate from the College. Sailing for Europe in 
the summer of 1852, he passed a year in foreign travel, meet- 
ing several of the Class in Paris, and with Coolidge he climbed 
to the parapet of one of the Seine bridges, whence they viewed 
the wedding procession of Napoleon III and Eugenie, and 
were impressed with the fact that while the bridegroom greeted 
the people with pleasant bows and smiles, the bride's haughty 
bearing showed only her pride in her new honours. Crowley 
had intended to visit Spain, but abridged his programme of 
travel in order to pass his twenty-first birthday with his parents. 
At this time he dropped his middle name of Aloysius, finding 
the signature too long for business convenience. 

Seen once on the street in boyhood, and again when staying 
in New York in his Junior year, was the face of a child and 
young girl, whose brilliant smile had lived ever since in Crow- 

1 For this and other references to Crowley and his father, Daniel Crowley, see 
Sumner, History of East Boston, 1858, passim. 

67 



Annals of the 

ley's memory and youthful fancy, and having now arrived at 
years of discretion, he sought the fair owner. His courtship 
prospered, and on January twenty-third, 1856, he married 
Mary Jane Cameron, daughter of Alexander James and 
Catherine Tucker Cameron, through her father, a direct de- 
scendant of Lochiel of Stuart fame. 

Having studied Law in the office of John C. Park (H. C. 
1824) in Boston, Crowley was admitted to the Bar in 1856, 
and at once met with success, taking no partner until 1876, 
when with his wife's brother-in-law, James Audley Maxwell, 
he formed the firm of Crowley and Maxwell. 

From his College days he had been interested in literature 
and the languages, and always loved to recall the moonlight 
night when he saw Everett, Sumner and Longfellow crossing 
the College Yard arm in arm. From the well-remembered 
Sales he had acquired an especial taste for Spanish literature, 
and long after graduation, on being asked to lecture for some 
charity, chose the Spanish Drama for his subject; the lecture 
was so favorably noticed in the newspapers that it attracted 
the attention of George Ticknor and led to a pleasant ac- 
quaintance between him and Crowley. 

Although anxious to volunteer at the time of the Civil War, 
his own young family and the increasing weakness and de- 
pendence of his father upon his only child made it impossible 
for him to leave home. 

Crowley was long President of the Boston Catholic Choral 
Society, and was one of the founders, in 1873, of the Catholic 
Union in Boston, being a charter member and the second 
President, an office which he held at several different times. 
He was never willing to enter politics, but from 1880 to 1887 
served on the Boston School Committee. After Mr. Maxwell 
became his partner, he devoted himself chiefly to chamber 
practice, and of his scanty leisure he gave the greater part 
freely and without fee to the legal needs of hospitals, asylums 
and other charitable institutions. 

He never refused help to anyone who asked it, and his 
kindness extended even to the omnipresent and pestiferous 
book agent of whom he used to say, "The man is trying to earn 
his living, and he needs encouragement." He was President 
of the Union Institution for Savings from 1873 to 1879. 

Mr. Crowley sailed for Europe in 1887, returning to this 

68 



Harvard Class of 1852 

country in 1889, and a year later moved to Detroit, Michigan, 
where he was connected with the Standard Life and Accident 
Insurance Company. In 1890 and 1893 he published "An 
Epitome of the World's History" by John Hardman, revised 
and enlarged by himself. Failing health obliged him to give 
up business in 1902, and leaving Detroit he finally made his 
home at Ridgewood, New Jersey, where he died on August 
fifth, 1910. In 1906 he and his wife celebrated their golden 
wedding. They had three children; Mary Catherine Crowley, 
born 28 November, 1856, unmarried, novelist and author; 
Agnes Cameron Crowley, who was born and died in 1861, 
and Daniel Cameron Crowley, born 24 May, 1862. Mrs. 
Crowley died 12 September, 191 2. 

Mr. Crowley's tastes and recreations were alike simple and 
domestic. He was a lover of books, music, (to old age he re- 
tained his fine baritone voice, and he read aloud with great feel- 
ing and expression) and art, of which he was an excellent judge. 
He usually owned a good "roadster" and loved driving. 

His daughter writes of him : 

He seldom took the initiative in forming a friendship, but once the 
ice was broken, he was cordial and entertaining, and was ever a loyal 
friend. . . . He was sensitive, proud, quick, but without resentment, 
and had a warm heart, beneath a reserved exterior. . . . He was 
always a staunch adherent of his faith. The land of his forefathers 
held a high place in his heart, but he was a thorough American. He 
loved Boston as a man loves the home wherein he was born; he loved 
Harvard with the love of a son for his mother; and he loved the 
Class of 1852 with a genuine affection that endured to the end. Even 
in the last weeks of his life, when he received an unexpected message 
from the survivors of the Class, he was deeply moved. His especial 
friends at College were the classmates near whom he sat at the lec- 
tures, — Buttrick, Joe Choate, Coolidge, Denny and others, and 
he sometimes spoke also of Thorndike, Thayer and Williamson. 

While living in Boston he was a regular attendant at the 
Class reunions, and thus replied to the last letter which he 
received from the Class Secretary: 

29 June, 1910. Seffern, Rockland Co., N. Y. 
Dear Classmates and friends of the Class of 1852: 

Greetings and good wishes, with others in addition to honor the 
fifty-ninth page of the Class Record now begun. Although I am un- 

69 



Annals of the 

able to be present at the Commencement Meeting of 1910, I am with 
you today in thought and cordial sentiment, as I have been on 
many similar occasions within the last twenty years. 

It is a great pleasure to me to learn, through friendly messages 
from Mr. Joseph H. Choate and Mr. S. Lothrop Thorndike that 
my name has frequently been mentioned in kind remembrance at 
the re-unions of the Class. . . . 

I shall always find it pleasant to recall the Class Meetings that I 
attended in earlier times and shall never cease to cherish happy 
memories of the enduring friendships formed during our College 
days at Harvard three score years ago. 

THOMAS JAMES CURTIS 

The son of Charles Pelham (H. C. 181 1) and Annie Wroe 
(Scollay) Curtis, Thomas James Curtis was born on the ninth 
of October, 183 1, in Boston. After two and a half years at the 
Boston Latin School, he entered the English High School and 
graduating from there, was fitted for College by Mr. George 
Eaton (H. C. 1833), entering in 1848. 

He was a member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, 
of the Alpha Delta Phi, the Harvard Natural History Society, 
the Institute of 1770 and Kpo/co'SetXo? of the Hasty Pud- 
ding Club; he also rowed stroke in the Yale-Harvard boat- 
race. At the May Exhibition of 185 1 he and Stedman gave a 
Latin Dialogue translated from the parts of Sir Anthony and 
Captain Absolute in Sheridan's "Rivals." He had a Dis- 
quisition in October, 185 1, on "Geological Travellers" and at 
Commencement another on "The Empire of Trebizond," the 
variety of subject certainly showing versatility on his part. 

In the latter part of December, 1852, Curtis started for the 
East Indies (Singapore et cetera) by the overland route through 
Europe, visiting Egypt, India, China, California and Mexico 
as well as all the Western States, and reaching home in March, 
1854. After passing a few months in the counting-houses of 
Thomas B. Curtis and Messrs. Gardner and Coolidge, respec- 
tively, Curtis formed a partnership with W. F. Parrott as 
commission merchants, in connection with which he went 
to Calcutta, remaining there until i860, when he returned to 
Boston, having previously dissolved his partnership. 

After a stay of about six weeks at home, he received a pro- 
posal to go out to New Zealand to establish a business house, 

70 



Harvard Class of 1852 

dealing with the Colony and the United States, under the firm 
name of Taylor and Company, with himself as head. His de- 
cision was made in six hours; in March he set forth, and arriv- 
ing at Fort Littleton, New Zealand, remained there for five 
years. On February eighteenth, 1864, he married Lily, daughter 
of John Baptist of Sidney, New South Wales. In the succeed- 
ing years he brought his bride home for a visit, and before re- 
turning, passed some months on the Continent, and in England, 
reaching Christ Church, his New Zealand home, in December 
of 1866. Although he never took part in political or public 
affairs, he became a naturalized citizen of the Colony and con- 
tinued to make his home there until 1872, when, returning to 
this country, he took up his abode in Brookline, and shortly 
after went into business in Boston. 

He lived in Brookline for several years, and in 1876 was a 
Director of the Gilberton Coal Company, but in June, 1877, 
he decided to sail for England, intending to remain through 
the summer and autumn, with the possibility of a more ex- 
tended stay. After a visit to New Zealand, and a winter in 
New York on business connected with his Colonial interests, 
Curtis determined to try a winter at Saint Leonard's on the 
Sea, England, in the hope of benefiting his wife's health. The 
stay became permanent, and although he subsequently re- 
moved to Tunbridge Wells, he never returned to this country. 

His letters to Denny show that expatriation did not weaken 
his love for his College days: "I look back on them as the 
pleasantest of my life, and I have a very warm feeling for all 
my classmates," he writes, and again, in .1908, he tells Thorn- 
dike that although he has been absent from home for so many 
years he still preserves a "great interest in our Class and our 
Classmates," and he sent a cablegram of greeting on the Thirty- 
Fifth Anniversary. 

Curtis died on the eleventh of February, 1910 at his home 
at Tunbridge Wells. His wife survived him. They had no 
children. 



CHARLES FRANCIS DANA 

Charles Francis Dana was the son of Francis Washington 
and Anne Finney (Holton) Dana and was born in Boston on 
the sixth of September, 1830. His father died when he was 

71 



Annals of the 

five years old, and in 1838 his mother having married Henry 
Schaeffer, a German gentleman, they moved with him to 
Antwerp in the same year. There Charles attended an ex- 
cellent German private school, becoming thoroughly familiar 
with German and French, which he spoke as fluently as his 
native tongue, — in fact his handwriting always showed the 
influence of the German script. 

He was sent to a boarding-school at Bonn when he was 
fourteen, where the boys were all English, and as he was ob- 
noxious to them for the twofold reason of being a foreigner 
and a Yankee, his sojourn there was not happy. He remained 
only a year, and after eighteen months at a Brussels School, 
attended the Athenee Royal of Antwerp until April, 1848, 
when he sailed for America. Failing in August to pass the ex- 
aminations for Harvard, he studied for a year with J. B. Fel- 
ton l and entered College with the Sophomore Class in 1849. 
He belonged to the Harvard Natural History Society, the 
Hasty Pudding Club, and the Institute of 1770, chumming 
during the senior year with Horace Coolidge in Holworthy 22. 

His mother, Mrs. Schaeffer, owned an estate at Brandon, 
Vermont, and on leaving College Dana began to study Law 
there; he was admitted to the Vermont Bar in September, 
1854, and having been admitted to the Suffolk Bar in April, 
1856, he opened an office on Court Street, Boston, in the fol- 
lowing year. 

He was a Justice of the Peace, a Freemason, and a member of 
the Boston Cadets, resigning from the latter in April, 1861. 
He was also commissioned Quartermaster of the First Regi- 
ment of the Massachusetts Volunteer Militia in 1859. Dana 
was elected a member of the Boston School Committee for 
three years in the March of i860, and two years later was ap- 
pointed to the Examining Committee of Modern Languages at 
Harvard College, a position for which his thorough knowledge 
of Continental tongues admirably fitted him. 

His interest in politics led to his election as Alderman by a 
large majority in 1863, and his re-election by an even larger 
majority in the succeeding year; he was chairman of the City 
Council for the Reception of the Russian Squadron, and he 
was one of the Vice-Presidents of the Republican Ratification 
meeting at Faneuil Hall in 1865. In the same year, he was a 

1 John Brooks Felton, H. C. 1847. 
72 



PLATE V 






DANA 


DOWN ES 


DENNY 


DWIGHT 




ESTE 



Harvard Class of 1852 

third time elected Alderman, and was also a member of the 
Executive Council of Massachusetts; his increasing interest 
in political matters leading to the abandonment of his legal 
practice. 

He became engaged, in 1867, to Elizabeth S. (Babcock) 
Kimball, the widow of his intimate friend William S. Kimball 
of Boston, whose only son was his namesake. Mrs. Kimball's 
sunny, joyous temperament caused Dana's friends to augur 
well for his happiness, for he was of a high-strung, sensitive 
disposition and at times given to depression. Shortly before 
they were to have been married he was attacked with a severe 
sore throat. Diphtheria was little understood in those days, 
and the doctor had gone home, assuring the family that he 
was on the high road to recovery; he died within a few hours, 
— on the sixteenth of October, 1868. 

The newspapers of the day pay tribute to the integrity and 
modesty which were his striking characteristics. He was on 
the Committee on Accounts and Pardons, where his services 
were valuable to the Commonwealth. "Ever scrupulous, 
never unkind or ungenerous, but at all times firm. He was 
truly an honest politician and discharged his duties with 
scrupulous fidelity." 

Charles Dana always retained his warm interest in Harvard, 
and was long on the Class Committee. He was a man of schol- 
arly tastes, and left an extensive and well-chosen library. His 
mother, who survived him but a short time, dying literally of a 
broken heart, gave a scholarship to Harvard College in his mem- 
ory, which is called The Dana Scholarship of the Class of 1852. 

A portrait painted when he was living in Antwerp, shows him 
to us when he was about fourteen, a quaint, erect little figure, 
clad in the costume of the time, a man's coat, buff waistcoat 
and stiffly starched shirt, the only trace of juvenility being the 
broad white collar spread out over the coat. A pretty boy he 
was, with a rather sober expression, and long-lashed, dreamy 
blue eyes, and the face is strangely like that of his later youth 
and manhood. 



HENRY GARDNER DENNY 

Henry Gardner Denny was the son of Daniel and Harriet 
Joanna (Gardner) Denny and was born in Boston on the 

73 



Annals of the 

twelfth of June, 1833. He was named for his maternal grand- 
father, who graduated from Harvard College in 1798. 

The Denny family were accustomed to pass their winters in 
Boston, their summers at their estate in Dorchester, and 
Henry was first sent to the school of Miss Susan B. Nickerson 
on Pearl Street. In 1841 he entered Chauncy Hall School, 
then in the hands of Gideon F. Thayer 1 and Thomas Gush- 
ing, Jr. (H. C. 1834), remaining there until he entered College. 

He delivered an Essay on "The Civilization of the Medi- 
terranean" at Commencement, and after graduation studied 
at the Harvard Law School until 1853, when he entered the 
office of Watts and Peabody on Court Street, remaining there 
for two years. 

Having been admitted to the Bar in 1856, he opened an 
office for himself in Court Street with Sidney Willard, and 
was appointed Justice of the Peace for Suffolk County. 

In 1857 he was made a member of the Examining Com- 
mittee in Rhetoric, Logic and Grammar at Harvard College, 
and remained on the Committee for ten years. 

The following chronological list of the offices held by Mr. 
Denny and of the chief events in his life is copied from the one 
which was typewritten for the Class Book: 

1858 Member and Secretary and Treasurer, Alumni Association 

to raise funds for Library 

1859 Member Examining Committee on Library Harvard College 
i860 Director Hamilton Bank. Probably same year, presided at 

meeting, 24 December, Lyceum Hall, Dorchester, in aid of 
families of John Brown and others killed at Harper's Ferry 

1 861 Director Hamilton Bank 

1862 1 6 July, Member Class Committee and Class Secretary, Member 

and Secretary Republican Town Committee of Dorchester 

1863 May, Member The Orpheus Musical Society, Boston (Re- 

signed 31 December 1885) 

1864 July 1, Member Examiner Club 

Member Dorchester School Committee, 1 year 
Member Library Committee, Union Club, Boston 
Re-elected Dorchester School Committee ■ — 3 years 

1865 April, Went to armies of Potomac and the James as Agent of 

the American Unitarian Association 
Dorchester Antiquarian and Historical Society 
Executive Committee Unitarian Association 

1 Gideon French Thayer, H. C. (h) 1855. 
74 



Harvard Class of 1852 

Justice of the Peace for Norfolk County 

1866 April, Chairman Dorchester School Committee 
Curator of Dorchester Antiquarian and Historical Society 
Trustee Massachusetts School for Feeble-minded and Idiotic 

Youth 
Re-elected member Executive Committee American Uni- 
tarian Association 
13 December, Member Massachusetts Historical Society 
Began to live in Boston in winter, 13 Beacon Street 

1867 March, Re-elected Chairman Dorchester School Committee 

1868 January, Treasurer Christian Register Association (held office 

till January, 1872) 
Cabinet Keeper Massachusetts Historical Society 
Vice-President Grant and Colfax Club, Dorchester 
Treasurer, pro tempore, Examiner Club 
Delegate, National Unitarian Conference, New York City, 

to represent Christian Register Association 
Treasurer Examiner Club 
Transferred legal residence to Boston 

1 869 Treasurer, Association for the Relief of Aged Indigent Females, 

Boston. (Resigned, January, 1880) 

Treasurer Phi Beta Kappa 

Member Executive Committee of Association for Aged In- 
digent Females 

1870 Trustee Boston Public Library 

1871 Fellow American Academy of Arts and Sciences 
Member Auditing Committee of above 

Life member Boston Society of Natural History 
Trustee Dorchester Athenaeum from 18 — to 1870 
1873 Member Harvard Musical Association 

1876 Member Society for promoting Theological Education 
Examining Commissioner Boston Public Library 

1877 Treasurer Society for Promoting Theological Education. (De- 

clined re-election, May, 1902) 
1 879 Appointed Member Nominating Committee of Phi Beta Kappa 

1 88 1 Went to housekeeping in Roxbury 

1882 Member Library Committee, Harvard Musical Association 

1883 Member Executive Committee, Suffolk Conference of Uni- 

tarian and other Churches 
1885 Secretary, Society for Promoting Theological Education, to 

fill vacancy till May, 1885 
1887 Treasurer Harvard Musical Association 

1893 Librarian Harvard Musical Association 

1894 Washed out of office 72 Pearl Street, 27 February? Took 

refuge at Hamilton National Bank 

75 



Annals of the 

1894 Treasurer Boston Library Society 

1896 Secretary, pro tempore, Boston Library Society, till June, 1897 
Life Member Boston Society of Natural History 
Life Member American Unitarian Association 
Trustee Dorchester Athenaeum 

President Dorchester Antiquarian and Historical Society 
Director Barnard Freedman's Aid Society of Dorchester 
Member Dorchester Conversation Club 

Denny made his home with his parents, and after the death 
of his father, in 1872, remained with his mother as long as she 
lived. 

Mr. Denny was an exquisite penman, and in his library was 
a volume of copper-plate specimens of old-fashioned eighteenth 
century round hand. He invited an English writing master 
to this country in his desire to improve the chirography taught 
in our schools. 

Essentially a gentleman of the old school, he was an ardent 
lover of books, and a collector; his library contained the first 
four folios of Shakspere, and was a very fine one. 

He often answered abstruse queries in the pages of the 
Transcript, and in 1857 was elected into the Phi Beta Kappa. 
Mr. Denny was a strong partisan of Garrison, and was a 
member of the Association for protecting the Abolition orators 
from violence; and there were probably few men of his day 
who served on more committees or who fulfilled their duties 
more conscientiously. 

The story of the energetic life and faithful duty of Henry Gardner 
Denny in this city runs back to prehistoric days before the Civil 
War, [wrote Edward Everett Hale at the time of his death l ] — the 
story of a living man, ready and fit for duty. He graduated in 1857 2 
and the men around him soon learned that he could be relied on for 
any service to the city or the nation. I remember an epigram of his 
when he was one of the necessary people in Salignac's battalion, 
which seems to me to embody the principle of his energetic life: 
"No man is ever too particular in the Manual." 

He seemed perfectly indifferent in any duty as to his own dis- 
tinction in the arrangement of services, if only the thing were well 
done. The arrangement of a library, the subduing of a mob, the 
equipment of a regiment for war, the preparation of a class meeting 

1 September twentieth. 

2 A slight error in Mr. Hale's self-styled "cast iron memory." 

7^ 



Harvard Class of 1852 

or for a public assembly, or any other of the hundred things which 
must be attended to was certain to be carried out completely if 
Denny was in any way responsible. The Boston Library, charitable 
institutions without number, clubs of his Class, or of his literary 
friends, were all so certain of this that it was enough to know that if 
Denny were the Treasurer, or were in any way among the directors, 
the movement of the machinery would be perfect. 

He was, I suppose, the leading authority, among our men of 
letters as to the variations in the popular use of the English language 
since the time of Chaucer. I know of no one in Boston who would 
lightly challenge a decision which he had formed on such subjects. 
We might say that his avocation was the study of English books as 
books, — of the peculiarities of language or of editions. 

A modest, unselfish, well-educated, intelligent, kind, all-round 
Christian gentleman, — this was Mr. Denny. 

Denny's chief characteristic might be said to be that of 
unfailing loyalty, and if the virtue showed its defect in that it 
developed a conservatism carried sometimes to obstinacy, he 
was himself the chief sufferer, and an uncomplaining one. It 
was consistent with his character to possess an enthusiasm 
for his environment, and strong family feeling. His was not a 
mind open to argument, but when forced to yield, he did so 
magnanimously, as in the case of the removal of the Boston 
Library Society which he bitterly opposed, but which he aided 
in every way when the vote was carried against him. In noth- 
ing was Mr. Denny's loyalty more shown than in his love for 
his College and all connected with the Class and classmates of 
1852. Class Secretary from the time of Dr. Page's resignation 
in 1862 until his death, his faithfulness in keeping in touch 
with the different members was untiring, and he showed a 
delicacy in offering aid to those otherwise financially un- 
able to attend the fortieth anniversary which was really 
beautiful. 

His care in the arrangement of the bills of fare for the Class 
Suppers was meticulous to a degree, and although unwilling 
to hearken to any suggestions that a less expensive menu 
might bring a larger number to the banquet, he was always 
glad to "make up" from his own pocket for any delinquents 
or for any excess in price. He was one of the chief originators 
of the '52 Dining Club; himself a disciple of Epicurus whom 
Burton might have had in mind when he said: "Cookery is 

77 



Annals of the 

become an art, a noble science; cooks are gentlemen," he set 
the example of the perfect service of a perfect dinner in his 
pleasant house in Roxbury, where with his other beautiful 
volumes was an extensive collection of works on culinary 
lore. 

There were many of us to whom Mr. Denny seemed a typical 
"Last-Leaf" as we used to see him crossing the Common from 
down town to his beloved Boston Library a dozen years ago. 
A short spare figure, clad in a long surtout of a by-gone age, 
moving evenly along with the measured short-stepping gait 
of a mechanical toy, the quaint little figure might call forth a 
smile, but none could fail to take him for a gentleman. 

Unable to appreciate the demands of later days, he refused 
to rebuild the stores which were burned in the Boston Fire of 
1872 to suit the requirements of tenants, and for this cause, 
among others, financial disasters came to him in his later 
years, and many trials. Few would have pictured him the 
hero of a love affair, but when the kinswoman who had re- 
fused him in his youth fell into poverty, old age and illness, he 
offered her and her sister a home when he could ill afford it, 
curtailing his few pleasures in his intercourse with his friends 
that he might give himself more wholly to her comfort. 

One by one his necessities obliged him to renounce the pur- 
suits and objects which he cared for; he resigned from the '52 
Dining Club on account of the expense, but his supreme sacri- 
fice was the sale of his precious library in the year before his 
death, yet even then he uttered no murmur of complaint. 

He died 1 on the nineteenth of September, 1907, — one worthy 
to bear 

The grand old name of gentleman. 



HENRY HILL DOWNES 

Henry Hill Downes was born in Boston, November twenty- 
fourth, 1830, the son of Commodore John Downes, United 
States Navy, and Maria Gertrude (Hoffman) Downes. 

The first ten years of his life were passed at the Charlestown 
Navy Yard; removing at that age to Boston, he prepared for 

1 A memoir of him was written by his friend, Samuel Savage Shaw (H. C. 1853), 
from which we have drawn several facts. 

78 



Harvard Class of 1852 

college at the Chauncy Hall School, and under Mr. George 
P. Sanger x having also tested the educational merits of one 
boarding school and eight day schools. Entering college in 
1849, at the second term of the Freshman year, his social dis- 
position and courteous manners soon made him popular. 

Downes decided to adopt the profession of Law, and en- 
tered the Dane Law School, transferring himself to the office 
of C. B. Goodrich, Esquire, in January, 1854, where he re- 
mained for a year, and on being admitted to the Suffolk Bar, 
began practice in Boston. In the hope of making more rapid 
progress, he moved to Detroit in 1855, and after a year there, 
tried his fortunes in Grand Rapids, Michigan; in the autumn 
of 1859 he came home for a visit, but returned to the West 
with the New Year, settling this time at Davenport, Iowa. 
There he was appointed Clerk of the Court of Common Pleas, 
and held the office until he moved to Quincy, Illinois, which 
was his home at the time of his enlistment in the Union Army, 
on August eleventh, 1862, as a private in the One Hundred 
and Twenty-Fourth Regiment of Illinois Volunteers. A 
month before his enlistment, in reply to the Class Committee, 
who had notified him of the Decennial Celebration of the 
Class, he wrote expressing his regret at his inability to be 
present, and concluded with these words : 

Trusting that on some future occasion I may meet with you not 
only for congratulations over individual prosperity, health and hap- 
piness, but over a Union re-established, a people re-united in unity 
and peace, a government restored, a nation mighty, permanent and 
indissoluble. 

He did not live to see the fulfillment of his hope. Fighting 
well and laboring faithfully, he continued in the Army of 
General Grant until his last illness. He died in the United 
States Hospital at Vicksburg, Mississippi, of malarial fever 
on the twenty-sixth of September, 1864. 

To himself and to his friends it was a source of satisfaction 
that although he might not share in the rejoicing over the 
termination of the long campaign which bought the freedom 
of the Mississippi, he knew that it had been successful. A 
true patriot, he counted it none too great a sacrifice to give 
his life for his country. 

1 George Partridge Sanger, H. C. 1840. 

79 



Annals of the 

JONATHAN DWIGHT 

Originally called John, Jonathan Dwight changed his 
Christian name to Jonathan, thus becoming the fourth of the 
name in the family. He was the son of Jonathan and Ann 
(Bartlett) Dwight, and was born in Boston on the twenty- 
eighth of August, 1830. His father was nearly related to 
President Dwight of Yale, and his mother was the daughter of 
Thomas Bartlett of Boston. When Dwight was two years 
old, his parents moved to Springfield. 

He prepared for Harvard with John Brooks Felton (H. C. 
1847), and unlike the rest of his classmates was glad when his 
College days came to an end. Seventeen months of his time, 
it is true, he passed "investigating," as he says, "the natural 
history of Cape Cod. The cause of my rustication was an 
expression of my love to a certain College officer." Dwight 
preferred his rifle to his dictionary, and was glad to depart 
from the Classic Shades of Cambridge, although he may have 
found some compensation during his sojourn there in rowing 
in the Harvard-Yale boat crew, on the occasion which is said 
to have been the pioneer race. 

After graduation, Dwight studied engineering at West 
Point under Professor Mahan, and did more or less railway 
surveying. In 1857 he married Julia Lawrence, daughter of 
Garret D. Hasbrouck of New York, and the young couple 
passed two years travelling in Europe. On his return, Dwight 
immediately resumed his engineering, and in 1861 established 
himself at Madison, New Jersey, where he built a house, and 
tried some agricultural experiments. He lived there until 1876, 
when he removed to New York. 

He superintended the surveying for the waterworks at 
Morristown, New Jersey, and was prominently connected 
with the building of railways especially in the West where he 
conducted important work on the Hannibal and Saint Joseph 
Railroad. One of his firms laid the foundation for the Statue 
of Liberty in New York Harbor; and he superintended the 
elevation of the tracks of the New York, New Haven and 
Hartford Road, an undertaking which he accomplished with 
a fortunate exemption from accident, although attended with 
great difficulty, as the passage of trains was at the rate of one 
hundred and twenty in every twenty-four hours. He says in 

80 



Harvard Class of 1852 

one of his letters to the Class Secretary that he prognosticated 
at his graduation that some of the Class of '52 might be so un- 
fortunate as to have to travel over bridges of his construction. 
His prophecy was certainly fulfilled. 

A great grief came to Dwight in 1885 in the death of his 
youngest son Arthur, who died at the age of twenty-one, 
having just graduated (in 1884) from Columbia with honours, 
and his letters show that it was long before he rallied from the 
blow. 

His wife survived him together with his older son, Jona- 
than the fifth, who graduated from Harvard in 1880. After 
1876 Mr. Dwight made his home in New York, where he was 
often to be found at the Engineers' Club; to the last an ar- 
dent disciple of Isaak Walton, he passed his summers on the 
Saguenay. 

In spite of his distaste for college life he retained his affec- 
tion for his classmates, and was always glad to hear from Mr. 
Denny; if he had added little to the "luster of 1852, he had 
done nothing to disgrace her," he wrote in one letter, showing 
that he had preserved his sense of loyalty to his Alma Mater. 
He had many friends, and was a generous but unostentatious 
contributor to many charities. 

He died at his home in New York on November twenty- 
eighth, 1910. 

WILLIAM MILLER ESTE 

" I was born in the city of Cincinnati, the Queen of the West, 
on the twenty-fifth of July, 183 1, at early dawn," writes Este 
in his place in the Class Book. His father, 1 David K. Este, 
was the son of Captain Moses Este of the Revolutionary War. 
He was a lawyer and moved from New York to Cincinnati 
soon after its settlement; William Este's mother was Louise 
Miller, daughter of William Miller of New Orleans. 

William's first school was an Academy at West Chester, 
Pennsylvania, kept by A. Bolmar, a former soldier in the 
Napoleonic Wars. He was a tyrannous old fogy, according 
to his pupil, and repeated use of the birch decided the. latter 
to take "French leave." He was then sent to New Haven, 
where, after a pleasant year under the instruction of Aaron 

1 See Appleton's Encyclopaedia for a notice of him. 
8l 



Annals of the 

Nichols Skinner, 1 he suddenly determined to enter Yale; 
doing so in 1848, he remained there for three years, when he 
was seized with a desire to transfer himself to Harvard, and 
became a member of the Class of 1852 in the Senior year. 

In 1859 Este visited Japan, and contributed a series of able 
articles on the country to Alta California, a San Franciscan 
publication; he was in San Francisco in i860, and in December 
of the following year was appointed Second Lieutenant in the 
Twenty-Sixth Regiment of Ohio Volunteers and A.D.C. on the 
staff of Brigadier General Schenck, taking part in the battles 
of Bull Run, Franklin, Strasburg, Mount Jackson, Cross 
Keys, Port Republic, Cedar Mountain, Freeman's Ford, 
Warrenton, Sulphur Springs, Waterloo Bridge, Groveton, 
second Bull Run and Chantilly. 

In March, 1863 he was appointed Major of United States 
Volunteers, his last post being that of Havre de Grace, of which 
he had charge. 

Major Este married Mary Goddard, daughter of Reverend 
Kingston Goddard, an Episcopal clergyman of Philadelphia. 
The marriage was not happy, and finally terminated in a 
divorce. The dissensions which for many years had pre- 
ceded this culmination threw a permanent blight over Este's 
whole life, embittered his nature and helped to prevent the 
development of the really uncommon talents with which he 
was gifted. He was at one time a member of the New York 
Produce and Petroleum Exchange, in connection with which 
he was concerned in litigation; he also speculated more or 
less, and had further business interests in Cincinnati. 

In 1892 he wrote and published for private circulation a 
biographical sketch of his maternal grandfather, William 
Miller. Retaining a never-failing interest in his Class, he 
always replied to the letters of the Class Secretary, and he 
attended the fortieth anniversary. Possessed of a brilliant 
mind, courtly manners, and a gayety and openness of humor, 
which at his best made him the life of any circle, he was also 
deeply loved by his family. 

"There can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability 
of mind and purpose," and on that rock was wrecked a life 
meant for better things. 

Este had two sons; David Kirkpatrick, born in 1863, who 

1 Yale College, 1823. 
82 



Harvard Class of 1852 

was an artist and married and died before his father, leaving 
two children; and Louis Ercole Este, born in 1868, who sur- 
vived him, and who entered Columbia College with the Class 
of 1890, but did not graduate. 

William Miller Este died at Walter's Park, Pennsylvania, 
on the seventeenth of February, 1900. 

EDWIN HEDGE FAY 

Edwin Hedge Fay was the son of Edwin and Harriet Porter 
(White) Fay, and says that he 

first saw the light on the seventeenth of March, 1832 in the "wilds" 
of Alabama. ... A place hardly deserving the name of town ('tho 
it was once laid out in town lots, and many of them were sold) which 
was called "Rocky Mount" l in Autauga County, has the honor of 
being my birthplace. 

His father graduated from Harvard in 18 17, having obtained 
a liberal education through the help of his uncle Levi Hedge 
(H. C. 1792) at that time a Professor at the College. Edwin 
Fay, Senior, settled in Alabama soon after the State was ad- 
mitted to the Union, and was a lawyer and school teacher. 
His son Edwin passed the first four years of his life in the 
society of little pickaninnies, from whom he parted unwillingly 
when his parents decided to send him to his grandmother to 
be educated. Her home was at Verona, Oneida County, 
New York, and with his father, mother and sister he set forth 
on his journey thither in an open barouche. 

Traveling in those days was attended with many vicissi- 
tudes. As the Fay family were crossing a creek in the north- 
ern part of the State, appropriately called the Shades of 
Death, which was swollen by excessive rains, Edwin with his 
mother and sister were carried over on a log, but Mr. Fay, 
who remained in the carriage, was washed some distance down 
the stream, and narrowly escaped drowning. The party 
visited Mammoth Cave, and after reaching Lexington, Ken- 
tucky, continued their journey by public conveyance. With 
his grandmother Edwin lived for five years, attending the 
common schools, and beginning to study Latin when he was 
nine years old. He returned home by sea, and from the time 

1 This place is not to be found on maps or in gazetteers of the present day. 

83 



Annals of the 

he was fifteen helped his father in teaching. Fearing that he 
was not sufficiently prepared to pass Harvard examinations, 
he decided to enter Western Reserve College at Hudson, Ohio, 
with the Junior class, and in consequence did not go to Har- 
vard until his Senior year. 

Fay began to teach school immediately after graduating, 
and in 1855 became the Principal of an Academy for boys at 
Minden, Louisiana. He married on March thirteenth, 1856, 
Sarah Elizabeth Shields, daughter of William and Sarah 
Elizabeth (Whitfield) Shields, who was born in Georgia on the 
thirtieth of August, 1837. 

As was natural, Mr. Fay's sympathies were with the Con- 
federates, and on the breaking out of the War he enlisted as 
private in a Cavalry Company from Minden; he was after- 
ward Orderly Sergeant of his Company, and eventually was 
transferred to the Engineer Corps of the Trans-Mississippi 
Department. 

Although he accepted the result of the conflict, he was 
always a firm believer in the right of the Southern Cause, 
and was proud to feel that he had fought for the Confederacy. 
He was a member of Feliciana Camp, North Carolina Veterans, 
No. 264. After the War he was Principal of the Fayette 
Academy in Mississippi, and in 1872 was elected Principal of 
the Silliman Female Collegiate Institute at Clinton, Louisiana. 

With a warm-hearted and generous disposition, he possessed 
the gift of arousing great affection in his scholars, and was also 
an admirable teacher; he was therefore loved and revered 
by his pupils both as preceptor and friend. In 1879 he was 
appointed State Superintendent of Education and filled the 
office faithfully. On retiring, he opened the Baton Rouge 
Seminary for Young Ladies and Girls, but his failing health 
obliged him to give up teaching, and he passed the last months 
of his life on his farm in East Feliciana Parish, dying on the 
twenty-seventh of December, 1898, at the house of his son- 
in-law, Professor Morgan of Baton Rouge, whither he had 
gone to pass the Christmas holidays. 

Professor Fay had seven children, two of whom died in 
childhood; the five living at the time of their father's death 
were Thorn well Fay, born 13 March, 186 1, assistant to the 
General Manager of the Southern Pacific Railroad Company; 
Edwin Whitfield Fay, born 1 January, 1865, Professor of Latin 

84 



PLATE VI 











FAY 



GRE ENWOOD 



GRAY 



FISHER 
GREGORY 



Harvard Class of 1852 

at Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Virginia; 
Charles Spencer Fay, born 23 October, 1867, Assistant General 
Freight Agent of the Southern Pacific Railroad Company at 
Atlanta; Sarah Elizabeth Fay, born 4 May, 1870, wife of 
Professor H. A. Morgan of the Louisiana State University; 
and Lucy Ella Fay, born 25 June, 1875, who received the de- 
gree of B.A. at the H. Sophia Newcomb Memorial College at 
New Orleans in June, 1895. 

Professor Fay never allowed his Southern sympathies to 
affect his interest in his Class, and although none of his sons 
graduated from Harvard, he bequeathed to them his faith in 
the College, and pride in their College ancestry. As, in addi- 
tion to his father, his paternal grandfather Jonathan Fay 
(H. C. 1778) married Rhoda, daughter of Thomas Wells White 
(H. C. 1759), and his maternal great-grandfather, Reverend 
Lemuel Hedge of Warwick, Massachusetts, graduated from 
Harvard in 1759, he could certainly claim to be a true descend- 
ant of Harvard. 

GEORGE HUNTINGTON FISHER 

George Huntington Fisher was the son of George and 
Elizabeth P. (Huntington) Fisher and was born in Oswego, 
New York, on the seventh of May, 1832. His father, the first 
lawyer to practise in Oswego County, moved in 1836 to North- 
ampton, Massachusetts, to obtain better educational ad- 
vantages for his children, and three years later the entire 
family sailed from New York in a packet ship bound for Havre. 
They established themselves first at Paris, and later at Passy, 
where they occupied a house close by Benjamin Franklin's 
former place of abode, near the entrance to the Bois de Bou- 
logne. In November, 1840, they went to Tours, and George 
attended school there and in other French towns until 1844, 
when they returned to Northampton. 

In the autumn of 1845 George was sent to the school of 
Mr. Goodnow at Concord, and in the spring of 1847 to the 
Hopkins Classical School at Cambridge, of which Edmund B. 
Whitman * was principal, where he finished his preparation 
for College. His part at Commencement was an essay on 
"The Division of Labor as affecting Mental Culture"; and 

1 Edmund Burke Whitman, H. C. 1838. 
85 



Annals of the 

he belonged to the Harvard Natural History Society and the 
Hasty Pudding Club. 

He began to study law at Syracuse immediately after he 
left College, and on being admitted to the New York Bar at 
Utica, in 1854, settled in Brooklyn, where he became senior 
partner in the firm of Fisher, Denly and Provost. A year later 
he formed ,a connection with James Maurice of Wall Street, 
New York, and soon after moved to the office of the latter. 
Mr. Fisher was an able and useful lawyer, and very active in 
his profession; his death was due to pneumonia, contracted 
when on his way to defend a client at Mineola Court House. 
A strong Republican, he was an Alderman of Brooklyn, a 
member of the old Brooklyn Common Council, and for some 
time its President; he was also in the Legislature in i860 and 
1 86 1, and a member of the Board of Supervisors of Education 
and one of the Park Commissioners. 

He was at one time Register in Bankruptcy and part owner 
of the Brooklyn Times. He was also director and counsellor 
of Hospital and Charitable Institutions and of the Indus- 
trial School Association of Brooklyn, and a member of many 
clubs. 

He married, December twenty-fourth, 1857, Emma Chi- 
chester, who died in October, 1888, leaving one son, George 
Chichester Fisher, born on the twenty-fourth of September, 
1858, 1 who graduated from Harvard in 1881, and died at San 
Francisco November tenth, 1910, unmarried. 

Mr. Fisher was married a second time, November sixth, 
1889, to Katharine Weeks of Flushing, Long Island, who sur- 
vived him. His adopted daughter, Mamie Esther, became 
the wife of Mr. Maurice Victor Benoit in 1896. 

Mr. Fisher always reverted with enthusiasm to the asso- 
ciations of his College days, and shared the brotherly pride 
with which the greater number of the "fellows" watched their 
classmate Choate's brilliant career. In 1887 he wrote to 
Denny: 

It is said, that men sometimes, after being married some years, 
have a way of falling in love with their wives a second time. . . . 
But it has occurred to me that something of the sort might be true 
of College memories and associations for I have had within the past 
year unaccountable dreams about College associations. 

1 The Fisher Genealogy gives the date as 26 October, 1858. 

86 



Harvard Class of 1852 

And again, after his return from the fortieth anniversary, he 
accompanied his cheque for the supper with the following 
rhyme : 

You drink to me, I'll drink to you; 

You may look the whole quinquennial through 

And you never (allegrissimo) find a better class than '52; 

So here's to the Class of '52. 

He died on the sixth of February, 1910, at Brooklyn, New 
York. 



JOHN SYLVESTER GARDINER 

The son of William Howard (H. C. 18 16) and Caroline (Per- 
kins) Gardiner, John Sylvester Gardiner was born in Boston 
on the fifth of October, 1830. He entered Harvard in the 
Sophomore year, and was a member of the Porcellian Club. 
On graduating he sailed for Europe, whence the different 
members of 1852 wrote home of meeting him, and remained 
there for a year or more. He died on the twenty-fifth of July, 
1856, in Boston. 1 He was never married. 

The letter of condolence which we append was written to 
his father by three of his most intimate friends among his 
classmates, Thorndike, Hooper and Pratt. 

Brought during the whole of our College life into more intimate 
relations with your son than were most of his classmates, we had 
only the better opportunity to observe and appreciate the worth of 
his character. Never prone to extend the circles of his more familiar 
associates, he lavished upon those with whom he was intimate all 
and even more than all the kindness and affection which by many 
is diffused through a large circle of acquaintance. When he had 
once bestowed his friendship, he was felt by all who knew him to be 
firm and true, — one whose sincerity could always be relied upon. 
His manliness was such that he always opposed with the whole 
strength of his character every meanness. We have again and again 
heard the sentiment expressed among his friends that he possessed 
a chivalrous and truly gentlemanly feeling rarely to be met with. 
Even in the familiar intercourse of College life he was never known 
to say a word which could spread an unjust report, and he always 
rebuked openly, fearlessly and unhesitatingly any conversation 
which he thought unworthy of a gentleman. We had watched with 

1 See Boston Medical and Surgical Journal for 16 October, 1856, vol. lv. no. it. 

87 



Annals of the 

sincere satisfaction his course since leaving College. We saw how 
manfully he had contended with a spirit naturally more inclined to 
intermittent effort than to the persistent application which ensured 
success, and it was with inexpressible sorrow and disappointment 
that we heard of his being taken from us just as he had attained, in 
the successful result of his examination for admission to the Bar, the 
first fruits of this steady perseverance. 

But with our sorrow there is yet mingled a heartfelt sense of 
thankfulness, that in the memory of our friend we have left to us 
the recollection of so many generous and noble qualities to exercise 
(as they did in life) an elevating influence upon all who knew him. 

LEVI GRAY 

Levi Gray was the son of John and Sarah (Knight) Gray, 
and was born on the second of February, 1827, at Lincoln- 
ville, Maine. He entered a machine shop at the age of four- 
teen and worked there for four years, passing much time 
meanwhile in the Post Office, but, animated with a desire for 
a liberal education, he repaired to Phillips Academy, Andover, 
in 1845, and after studying there for three years entered the 
Freshman Class at Amherst College, where he remained until 
the last term of the Junior year, when he betook himself to 
Yale. His desires, however, apparently turned to Cambridge, 
for he entered Harvard at the beginning of the Senior term. 
He supported himself during his College life by teaching 
school at Pelham, Northampton and Littleton, Massachusetts. 
It was no doubt while teaching at the last named place, dur- 
ing his Senior year, that he met his first wife. She was Sophia K. 
Harwood, daughter of Nahum and Sophia (Kimball) Harwood 
of that town, and they were married on the first of May, 1856. 

Gray continued to teach school for some months after 
graduation, and studied at the Harvard Law School and in 
the office of a practitioner in Boston. He was admitted to 
the Suffolk Bar in October, 1854, and opened an office for him- 
self at No. 35 Court Street, Boston, in the succeeding January, 
being appointed .Justice of the Peace and, in 1 861, Clerk of 
Ward 14. 

In 1863 he moved to New York, where he was admitted 
to the New York Bar, and there continued the practice of his 
profession. 

His first wife having died, he married on June fourth, 1873, 



Harvard Class of 1852 

Sarah E. (Gibbs) Nichols, daughter of Jonathan and Relief 
Gibbs and widow of Alfred E. Nichols of Lowell. They made 
their home for the ensuing ten years at Yonkers, New York; 
leaving there, in 1883, to establish themselves in Roxbury, 
Massachusetts, where Mrs. Gray still (1918) survives, in ex- 
treme old age. 

At the time of their removal Mr. Gray was already suffer- 
ing from the seven years' illness which preceded his death, 
and had wholly withdrawn from professional life. 

He retained his interest in his Harvard associations and 
was a regular attendant at the Class Dinners during his last 
years. He died in Roxbury on the twenty-ninth of October, 
1882, and is buried at Lowell. 

He had no children. 

AUGUSTUS GOODWIN GREENWOOD 

The son of the Reverend Francis William Pitt Greenwood 
(H. C. 1 8 14) of King's Chapel, and Maria Goodwin, Augustus 
Goodwin Greenwood was born in Boston on the twelfth of 
September, 1832, and was baptized by his father in the fol- 
lowing October. 

He was a member of the Odd Fellows Society while at col- 
lege, of the Hasty Pudding Club and of the Institute of 1770. 

He studied Law and received his degree in 1854, and prac- 
tised for a time in Boston, where he was a member of the First 
Corps of Cadets, but his delicate health prevented his going 
to the front on the outbreak of the War. 

Having accompanied his sister, Mrs. James Lodge, to Europe, 
he passed the winter of 1867 in Rome, and remained on the 
other side of the ocean for several years. 

Mr. Greenwood was very musical, and possessed a bril- 
liant mind, but his lack of physical strength was a constant 
handicap, and after two years of invalidism he died at Provi- 
dence, Rhode Island, on the fourteenth of March, 1874. 

EDWIN SMITH GREGORY 

Edwin Smith Gregory was born in Fleming, 1 Cayuga County, 
New York, on the twentieth of April, 1828, the son of William 

1 Now discontinued as a Post Office. 
89 



Annals of the 

and Abigail (Smith) Gregory. Two years later his parents 
moved to Peru, 1 Ohio, and Gregory taught school during the 
winters of 1845, 1846 and 1847. In 1848 he entered the Fresh- 
man Class of the Western Reserve College, remaining there 
until 1852, when he became a member of the Senior Class at 
Harvard. He belonged to the Hudson Chapter 2 of the Alpha 
Delta Phi and to the Western Reserve Chapter of Phi Beta 
Kappa. 

Immediately after graduating, he married, 28 July, 1852, 
Miss Clara M. Baldwin, related through her mother to the 
family of Hudson, who founded the town of that name in 
Summit County, Ohio. 

Gregory settled on a farm in Monroeville, Huron County, 
Ohio, and combined agriculture with the study of Medicine. 
He was also Superintendent of the Schools of the place. In 
March, 1854, he wrote to the Class Secretary to claim the 
Class Cradle for his u filia pulchrior," Hattie M., who was born 
on the fourth of March of that year. Huntington had already 
received the Class Cradle, but his baby died in infancy. 

Gregory was present at the Class Supper in 1855. 

His second daughter, Anna L., was born 23 July, 1858. 

Gregory became Principal of the Preparatory Department 
of Western Reserve College, and Adjunct Professor of Latin, 
positions which he filled most satisfactorily. In 1868, when 
Joe Choate ran across him at New Haven, he reported him as 
looking "very hearty and very grey", and at that time he 
was Principal of the Rayen School Laboratory of Agricultural 
Chemistry at Youngstown, Ohio. 

He was a Trustee of Western Reserve University and in 1889 
he received the honorary degree of Ph.D. from Wooster. 

Having given up active life, Gregory retired to a farm of 
seven hundred acres at Hudson, Ohio, where he wrote Denny, 
in 1891, that he had the best Holland and Jersey cattle in the 
State. 

The wish of his heart was to attend the Fortieth Anniver- 
sary of his Class at Harvard, which had ever held an important 
place in his affections, but as the time drew near, obstacles 
arose which seemed insuperable to his faithful nature, and he 
wrote to Denny that he must give up his cherished plan. We 

1 Peru township, Morrow County. 

2 Western Reserve College. 

90 



Harvard Class of 1852 

wish we had the reply which the Class Secretary sent to him; 
whatever it was, it touched the heart-strings of wife and chil- 
dren, who insisted on his going, and the ten lines in which he 
informed Denny that he would come are filled with a boyish 
jubilation that is infinitely pathetic: "If your table is full, I 
will stand at the mantel or the sideboard. Hoping to be with 
the boys — I am Yours for /52", and with them he was! It 
was the crowning pleasure of his life, and the last, for Dr. 
Gregory's health began to fail early in the ensuing spring, 
and during the months of weariness and pain which fol- 
lowed, the memory of the re-union with the friends of his 
College days was the ever-bright spot, the source of endless 
happy reminiscence. The letters which Mrs. Gregory wrote 
to the Class Secretary during her husband's last illness show 
how grateful Dr. Gregory's family were to Denny for his 
tender kindness during that happy visit to Cambridge, and 
also for Denny's thoughtfulness in sending him messages and 
items from the Classmates, which, no matter how great his 
weakness and suffering, never failed to give pleasure to one 
who loved his College well. 

Dr. Gregory died at the house of his daughter in Canton, 
Ohio, on the tenth of October, 1893. 

His older daughter married Julius Whiting, Esquire, of 
Canton; his younger daughter also married, and both had 
children. It was their grandfather's hope that his namesake, 
Edwin Gregory Lee, might one day graduate from Harvard. 
In reading the sweet and touching letters written by his wife, 
even one who never knew him can see how rarely lovable and 
loyal a character his must have been. The following extract 
is from a note of hers to his classmate, Wallace: 

It is an unspeakable comfort to us that he was induced to take 
the journey and attend the re-union of his Class on their Fortieth 
Anniversary. He enjoyed every hour of his absence, and the day 
spent with you was especially pleasant and full of interest, which 
he often talked of afterward; and he prized and used the cane you 
gave him, as long as it was needed. . . . He was not afraid to die, 
his only dread was leaving me. . . . His gratitude for every kindness 
and thoughtfulness of his friends was very lovely. ... It is hard to 
realize that his noble, useful life is ended, with only a precious memory 
and his name left to me. 



91 



Annals of the 

EPHRAIM WHITMAN GURNEY 

Ephraim Whitman Gurney was the son of Nathan Gurney, 
for many years Superintendent of the Massachusetts General 
Hospital, and of his wife Sarah Whitman. He was born in 
Boston on the eighteenth of February, 1829. The Class Book 
tells us that he was fitted for college by D. B. Tower and by 
George Eaton (H. C. 1833), but he was largely self-prepared 
and could have needed little help. 

He was a member of the Institute of 1770, participated in 
the Exhibition of May, 1852, and delivered a Dissertation at 
Commencement. He was also in the Phi Beta Kappa. He 
remained in Cambridge for a time as a resident graduate, and 
after teaching in the school of D. B. Tower on Park Street, 
Boston, opened a Classical and Scientific School for Boys in 
Cambridge in conjunction with Professors Lane and Lover- 
ing l in 1856. 

In the following year he was appointed tutor in Greek and 
Latin at Harvard, becoming assistant professor in 1863; in 
1867 he was assistant professor of Philosophy, and a year later 
was transferred with the same rank to the Department of 
History. In 1870 he was selected to fill the office of Dean of 
the College Faculty, resigning in 1875 for a two years' stay in 
Europe, accompanied by his wife. He especially enjoyed the 
time passed in England, for he met almost everyone worth 
knowing and left behind him scores of friends who admired 
him as he deserved. 

On his return to Cambridge he filled the chair of Professor 
of Roman Law and History, later becoming McLean Pro- 
fessor of History and so remaining until his death. He was 
made a Fellow of the Corporation in 1884. 

In his prime, at the height of his influence for good, Pro- 
fessor Gurney was attacked by an insidious and wasting 
disease, which physicians found it difficult to diagnose, im- 
possible to cure, that slowly wore his life away. Four months 
before his death he was moved to Pride's Crossing, where he 
died on the twelfth of September, 1886. 

Professor Gurney's first scheme of life was to fit himself for 
the ministry; that he possessed unusual qualifications for a 
clergyman is unquestionable, indeed there were few careers in 

1 George Martin Lane (H. C. 1846), Joseph Lovering (H. C. 1833). 

92 



PLATE VI I 








GURN EY 
H I LL 



H EAD 



HAVEN 
HILLIARD 



Harvard Class of 1852 

which a man of his great ability and high aims could fail to 
make his mark and to leave a lasting influence, but to one of 
his modest and retiring nature the life of a scholar seemed 
especially suited. 

He contributed articles at one time to the Nation, and he 
succeeded Norton and Lowell as Editor of the North American 
Review, but he resigned at the end of eighteen months, and 
wisely, for it would have been a cruel waste to expend the ex- 
quisite care and finish which he gave to all literary work on 
magazine articles or the drudgery of editorship. His English 
style was lucid, subtle, polished, correct and strong, and 
charming in its graceful ease. It is impossible to over-estimate 
his erudition; thoroughly familiar with the ancient classics, 
his knowledge included also philosophy, law and politics, and 
he was at home in French and German as well as in English. 
It is said that in the hours of council of the Faculty which 
prefaced the changes in the College requirements for admission, 
attendance at Chapel et cetera, no one had more influence 
than Professor Gurney. As he was by natural inclination 
a conservative, his consent to radical measures carried the 
greater weight, and certainly no one could have more wisely 
filled the office of the first Dean of the Academical Department. 
Generous as well as just in his judgments, he possessed also 
the divine gift of sympathy, and although his own youth had 
been almost that of an ascetic in its unremitting study, he 
could yet show a tenderness for the culprit which took all the 
bitterness from the admonitions which his office obliged him 
to deliver. 

He was a remarkable judge of character, too, and his intui- 
tive perception and correctness of prophecy in regard to the 
graduates who had passed before him during twenty years, 
was extraordinary. The same beautiful sympathy made his 
friendship a rare privilege, and those familiar with his class- 
mate Wright realized how much went out of his life when 
Gurney's marriage ended the constant and beneficent inter- 
course of bachelor days. Nor was he the only one to whom 
the light in the second-story, front-corner room, which Gurney 
occupied for many years, on Dunster Street, was a beacon 
light, around which gathered as brilliant and goodly a company 
of young men as Cambridge could then supply. 1 

1 See Thayer, Letters of Chauncey Wright, p. 34. 

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Annals of the 

Addison Brown counted him for many years his closest 
friend, and among his papers is a portrait of Gurney which 
may serve to bring his personality before us : 

In personal appearance he was unprepossessing . . . and wholly 
belied the gracious and benignant gentleman within. By degrees 
Gurney became popular, both in College days and afterwards. His 
manners were the perfection of good breeding; he was never forward 
or self-asserting; never controversial, and would listen patiently for 
hours while his friends talked over their own affairs. 

Huntington named his first born son for him, and nine years 
after his death wrote Denny "No one is in my mind oftener 
then E. W. G." 

In one of the obituary notices from those who loved him 
was the following tribute: 

No adequate idea of the pleasures of familiar intercourse with him 
could be given to any stranger, however full. 

And yet another says of him: 

It is worth every one's while to look at such a life as Professor 
Gurney's in its quiet simplicity and its unselfish devotion to noble 
aims, and to remember that of him it can be truthfully said that so 
far as in him lay he made the world about him better and wiser by 
living in it. No higher or purer praise than this can be given to any 
man, and this he well deserved. 

Professor Gurney married 3 October, 1868, Ellen Sturgis 
Hooper, daughter of Dr. Robert William 1 and Ellen (Sturgis) 
Hooper of Boston. Their home was on Reservoir Hill, Cam- 
bridge, and one of the Class of '63 told the writer of going to 
see Professor Gurney on College business soon after his mar- 
riage, and that the picture of him and of Mrs. Gurney at their 
fireside had always lived in his memory as that of an ideal 
home. Their happiness was marred by periods of mental 
aberration on the part of Mrs. Gurney, 2 who outlived her hus- 
band but a short time. They had no children. 

1 H. C. 1830. 

2 Mrs. Gurney bequeathed to the College $158,544 to found a Professorship of 
History. This Fund was allowed to accumulate to its present amount, about $200,000. 
See page 430, post. 

94 



Harvard Class of 1852 

SAMUEL FOSTER HAVEN, JUNIOR 

Son of Samuel Foster (H. C. 1826) and Lydia Gibbon (Sears) 
Haven, was born on May twentieth, 183 1, in Dedham. 
His mother dying when he was three years old, he was 
sent to a private family in Salem and thence to a boarding 
school in Needham, where he remained about five years. He 
was then taken to his father in Worcester, and lived with 
him until he entered College, for which he was fitted at the 
Worcester High School. 

In January, 1853, he began to study medicine with Dr. 
Henry Sargent in Worcester, but later attended the Massa- 
chusetts Medical College, graduating at the Commencement 
of March, 1855. In the summer he went to Europe for pro- 
fessional study, devoting himself especially to ophthalmology 
and passing the following year at Berlin and Vienna. In 1857 
he opened an office in Boston, but remained there only a year, 
moving in the spring of 1858 to Worcester, where he devoted 
himself especially to diseases of the eye. 

When the war broke out, he volunteered immediately and 
became Assistant Surgeon on the organization of the Fifteenth 
Massachusetts Regiment of Volunteers. As the Senior Sur- 
geon was ill and away, he had entire charge for many months, 
and ultimately was commissioned in his place. During the 
whole of his service, he devoted himself unsparingly to his 
duties, never taking any furlough or leave of absence. 

By his presence on the field, Dr. Haven is said to have saved 
many who must otherwise have died for want of immediate 
attention, and it was the knowledge of this which made him 
feel that the exposure of his own life was justified. Entirely 
regardless of personal danger, he always accompanied his 
regiment into battle, that he might instantly be at hand to 
aid the wounded. The Medical Director of the division re- 
monstrated with him, when the regiment entered the final 
engagement at Fredericksburg, but so great was Haven's de- 
sire to be with his men that his wish was granted, and he was 
allowed to accompany them into action; he was killed by a shell 
while marching beside the color-bearer on December thirteenth, 
1862. 

"Brave but unfortunate regiment!" was the general ex- 
clamation when that day's fatal work was known. Haven 

95 



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Annals of the 

stood "high in the estimation of his classmates on account of 
his sterling merit, unobtrusive conduct and diligent attention 
to the higher duties of life." l 

Whatever he attempted, he carried out with all his mind 
and all his strength at whatever cost to himself. Kind, skil- 
ful, faithful, he was indeed an irreparable loss. Slightly eccen- 
tric in manners and trend of mind, he was yet admirably fitted 
to excel in certain departments of his profession. He was fond 
of scientific research and had printed two essays, — on "In- 
testinal Obstructions" and on "Cysticerci within the Eye." 
He had prepared also a Chronological Catalogue of books and 
pamphlets printed in this country from its settlement to the 
time of the Revolution, and this, with an introductory chapter 
was almost ready for the press, when he was called away. 2 

If Haven's reserved nature narrowed the circle of his friends, 
he was the more devoted to those whom he admitted to inti- 
macy, and almost pathetically happy if he could confer a 
favor upon those he loved. 

He died, as he would have wished, true to the duty which 
was nearest him, and "faithful unto death." 

With skilful touch he turned away 
Death's wishful hand from wounded men; 
But when was done that doleful day, 
The living laid him with the slain. 

Thy hurt to heal, native land! 
What mortal might, he did and dared; 
And when all service of his hand 
Secured not enough, his heart he bared, 

And laid his life upon thy hurt, 
By losing all, to make thee whole; 
But could not lose his high deserts 
And place on Memory's record-roll. 

And when that sacred roll she calls, 
The word, perchance, will reach his ear, 
And he shall, from the eternal halls, 
Among God's angels, answer, "Here!" 

1 Letters of condolence from the Class to Dr. S. F. Haven, Senior, long the accom- 
plished Librarian of the American Antiquarian Society. 

2 Afterwards published in Thomas's History of Printing in America (1878). 

96 



Harvard Class of 1852 

We will not deem his life was brief, 
For noble death is length of days; 
The sun that ripens autumn's sheaf 
Has poured a summer's wealth of rays. 1 



GEORGE EDWARD HEAD 

The son of George Edward (H. C. 18 1 2) and Hannah (Catlin) 
Head, George Edward Head, Jr., was born in Boston on the 
fourth of February, 183 1, and prepared for college at the 
Boston Latin School. He was a member of the Odd Fellows 
Society and of the Institute and was one of the Knights of the 
Punch Bowl. 

He graduated with honor from the Tremont Medical School 
in 1855, and immediately entered a Rhode Island hospital; 
from July, 1857 to 1858, he was Acting Surgeon at Fort Macki- 
naw, and on leaving there practised for two years in Amherst, 
Massachusetts. 

Head was appointed First Lieutenant, Eleventh Infantry 
U. S. A., on the fourteenth of May, 1861; his regiment joined 
the Army of the Potomac in February, 1862 and he took part 
in all the campaigns of the army, until ordered to Fort Inde- 
pendence, Boston Harbor, in December, 1862. After acting 
as Regimental Adjutant from October, 1862 to April, 1863, 
he rejoined his regiment in May of that year, and was present 
at many of the important battles and sieges of the war, re- 
ceiving the title of Brevet Major in August, 1864. Head 
served as a member of the Military Commission, and was 
Judge Advocate at Baltimore for almost a year, commanding 
the posts of Charlottesville and Camp Hamilton, Virginia, 
until the summer of 1867, being assigned to the Third United 
States Infantry in 1871. 

Major Head married Miss Lydia Barry of Newport, New 
York, who died in 1876. They had two children, Mary East- 
burn, who married, in 1891, Lieutenant Ellwood W. Evans, 
and Margaret Gray, who married Lieutenant Robert J. Duff, 
both of the Eighth United States Cavalry. 

Major Head remained in active service until 1891. On re- 

1 The stanzas, inscribed to Dr. Haven's memory, appeared in the Worcester Spy 
of 30 December, 1862, and were presumably written by the Reverend D. A. Wasson. 
(Harvard Memorial Biographies.) 

97 



c, 



Annals of the 

tiring, he made his home at Newport, New York, and died 
there on the eighth of September, 1908. 

His warm heart and merry humor are shown especially in the 
Records which he wrote for the Knights Punch Bowl, one 
being in Chaucerian rhyme, and in the one for October, 1857, 
their is a touch of prophecy in regard to the coming storm 
between North and South : 

And there was another l whom we all dearly loved, sleeping a quiet 
sleep far away from the K. P. B. Let us remember how his eyes 
were closed by one of our Southern countrymen. If treason should 
ever arise in our nation, let us remember this tie, and if we can with 
honor, let us stand by our common country. There is not a south 
wind that blows but brings us tidings from Norris's grave. 

In 1890 Major Head wrote to Denny in reply to the annual 
notice of the Class Supper: 

Twenty-nine years of Army life has not made me forget old Har- 
vard, and every time that Yale beats at New London the doctor 
puts me on the sick list for a week. He says that I am too cross to 
be trusted with the men on the drill ground. 

After all, Army life is not such a bad thing, were it not for reveille. 
Fancy the wrath of the Class had they been told when they gradu- 
ated that they must go to prayers every blessed morning of their 
natural lives!- — and reveille is wuss'n prayers because it comes off 
at dawn of day. 

I have tried to express my idea in some verses, which will you 
please kindly to read to the Class, or if you cannot decipher my hiero- 
glyphics, Charley Stedman knows my handwriting, though perhaps 
not as well as certain Jews that I wot of. The lines may keep some of 
the young bloods from enlisting, especially Jo Choate, who has shown 
such a penchant for a military life that I am in daily fear of hearing 
that he has taken the King's shilling. The files of the Army and 
Navy Journal show that he has already been court-martialled twice. 
I hope they will not cast a gloom over the festivities of the evening. 

At length the soldier's weary life 
Is lapped in sleep profound, 
And fond sweet dreams of home and wife — 
When lo! an awful sound! 
The drum's harsh beat that bids him rise 
And roll-call oversee; 
The soldier stretches, rubs his eyes, 
And d — mns the reveille! 

1 Norris. 
98 



Harvard Class of 1852 

The coughing sergeants call the rolls, 
The sneezing ranks reply, 
While officers with unkempt polls 
Look on with gloomy eye; 
Up comes the day with scowl of gray 
Such folly there should be, 
And like a private seems to say 
O d — mn the reveille! 

Grim fever lurks in stagnant pools, 
And has their graves prepared, 
Who dare him face, the stupid fools, 
Before the day is aired. 
The sun himself don't see the use, 
And puzzled seems to be, 
Before he rises, why the deuce 
Men go to reveille. 

God bless our land — its sins forget — 
And North to South cement; 
God bless its white folks, niggers, debt, 
Its pigs and President; 
God bless the noble lads in blue 
Who made our country free; 
But God confound the villain who 
Invented reveille. 



JAMES SENECA HILL 

James Seneca Hill was the son of George W. and Sallie 
(Albee) Hill, and was born at Pawtucket, Rhode Island, on 
the third of March, 1825. His father died while he was still 
in childhood, and his uncle having been appointed his guar- 
dian, he accompanied his mother to Willimantic, Connect- 
icut, moving thence to Windham, where he lived in the 
family of James Wilson for several years and attended school. 
Later, working for a time on his uncle's farm at Willimantic, 
he continued his studies at school, and about the year 1837 
entered the Holliston Academy, of which the Reverend Gard- 
ner Rice was then the Principal. After two years or more 
there, and one winter at the Bolton Academy at Colchester, 
that village being his mother's home at the time, he went to 
Chaplin, Connecticut, to learn the carpenter's trade. 

99 



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Annals of the 

His mother and uncle meanwhile moved to Northampton, 
Massachusetts, and thither James followed them two years 
later, building a small house for his mother, about 1843, and 
continuing his trade, employing several men under him, and 
erecting houses and barns, as well as assisting his elder brother 
in the wood-work for a stone dam. After the first winter he 
never failed to attend the Academy at Easthampton, and 
having completed his work on the dam, and feeling exhausted 
from the constant hard labour, he suddenly bethought him- 
self of going to College. He therefore entered the Williston 
Seminary at Easthampton in December, 1846, and prepared 
himself for Amherst College, becoming one of the Freshman 
Class in 1848, and taking the first prize for declamation in 
1850. In the Autumn of 185 1 he left Amherst for admission 
to the Senior Class at Harvard, supporting himself during his 
last two years at College by school-teaching in country towns. 

On graduating he studied medicine at the Boylston Medical 
School in Boston, and having received his degree of M.D. in 
1855, was almost immediately appointed physician to the 
State Almshouse at Tewksbury. He successfully performed 
many difficult surgical operations while at Tewksbury, where 
he had twenty-five hundred patients under his charge, all of 
whom adored him, and with reason, for in cases where his skill 
could not cure, his wonderful ingenuity alleviated suffering by 
means of his clever adaptation and invention of appliances for 
comfort. Unfailingly kind and courteous to all, rich and poor, 
he was universally beloved by those of every color and race. 
There was nothing, on which he set his mind, which he could 
not accomplish. Interested in life-saving articles, he invented 
a safety lamp and a life-boat. He had also no mean talent for 
poetry, some of his songs being set to music. 

After eighteen months at Tewksbury, he decided to go to 
California, and in January, 1857 set forth from New York on 
what in those days was a long journey to Sacramento. Shortly 
after his arrival, he was taken sick with typhoid fever at his 
brother's house, dying at the end of a fortnight's illness on the 
twenty-first of April, 1857. His versatility, great ingenuity, 
and especially his uncommon aptitude for his profession proved 
to all who knew him that had longer life been his, he would 
have attained to eminence certainly in surgery, and probably 
in many other directions as well. He was unmarried. 

100 



Harvard Class of 1852 

FRANCIS WILLIAM HILLIARD 

"On the eighteenth of July, 1832, there was joy in the town of 
Dracut," writes Hilliard in the Class Book, 

for there was born a son to Francis Hilliard (H. C. 1823), Counsellor 
at Law and once of Cambridge, son of Deacon William Hilliard and 
Catharine Dexter Haven, daughter of Samuel Haven of Dedham. 
Of this first born [he continues] nothing is more certain than that 
during his first months he was less in size and uglier in aspect than 
any infant before or since, so that upon allusion being made to his 
condition in the presence of any who had the honor at that time 
of being numbered among his acquaintances, the whole family 
invariably burst into a fit of uncontrollable laughter. 

His parents moving to Cambridge, when he was five years 
old, Hilliard was sent to the school of a Miss Jennison, 1 and on 
his way to and fro passed daily through the College Yard, 
which always inspired him with a feeling of awe. His family 
moved again about 1838, settling in Roxbury, where he fitted 
for College at the Roxbury Latin School and with Henry 
Blatchford Wheelwright (H. C. 1844). 

Hilliard belonged to the Harvard Natural History Society 
and to the Institute of 1770, and of course to the Phi Beta 
Kappa, as he was the tenth scholar in the Class. He took part 
in the Exhibitions of October, 1850 and 1851, and delivered 
an English poem at Commencement on "The Discipline of 
Life." 

He was private tutor for two years in the family of his 
classmate Collins on their plantation at Scuppernong, and his 
sympathies were therefore perhaps not unnaturally always 
with the Southern cause. 

Having studied for the ministry at the General Theological 
Seminary of New York, he was ordained deacon and priest in 
North Carolina where the greater part of his life was passed, 
his first parish being Saint Paul's Church at Edenton. 

In 1857 he married Maria Nash Johnson, daughter of the 
Reverend Samuel I. Johnson, and his oldest son, Francis, was 

1 Miss Mary Emelia Jennison was a daughter of Dr. Timothy Lindall Jennison 
(H. C. 1782). Her school was kept in her father's house, which stood at the corner 
of Garden and Mason Streets. Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson was one of 
her pupils. The site is now covered by the Shepard Memorial Church. (An His- 
toric Guide to Cambridge, 1907, pp. 139, 140, which contains a view of the house; 
The Giles Memorial, pp. 263, 264.) 

IOI 



Annals of the 

born 3 March, 1858. In 1859 he moved to Plymouth, North 
Carolina, where his daughter, Margaret Burgoyne, was born 
on the twenty-fifth of June; his daughter Catherine Haven 
on June fifteenth, 1861, Samuel Iredell on May first, 1862, 
and George Johnson on April fourth, 1864. Mr. Hilliard, as 
we have said, was a Secessionist in his views. Having passed 
the summer of 1865 at Worcester, he returned to the South, 
where his sixth child was born and died. He was for a time 
Rector of St. John's Church in Erie, Pennsylvania, and in 
1878 was settled over St. Mary's at Pocomoke City, Worces- 
ter County, Maryland; thence he wrote to the Class Secre- 
tary, sending to all the classmates an affectionate message of 
remembrance. 

He saw Brown and Anderson in New York in April, 1883, 
and met William Cole Leverett at the General Convention of 
the Episcopal Church in Chicago three years later. Hilliard 
was the Senior Presbyter of his Diocese at the time of his 
death. From 1890 to 1900 he was at Monroe, North Caro- 
lina, and at Beltsville, Georgia County, Maryland. Retiring 
from parochial work with the new century, he bought a School 
for Young Ladies at Oxford, North Carolina, which he car- 
ried on until his death with the assistance of his three daughters. 
Mrs. Hilliard died in July, 1909, and Hilliard survived her but 
a year, dying on the twenty-fourth of July, 1910 at Memphis, 
Tennessee, at the home of his son. Of his ten children, five 
were then living. No difference of opinion about North and 
South could tarnish Hilliard's love and loyalty to his Class. 
"I catch myself calling the roll as it used to be every now and 
then", he said in one of his notes to Denny, "so you see, I am 
ever true to the dear old Class of '52;" and in 1890 he was 
with them once more at the Class Supper. 

JOHN EMORY HOAR 

Born at Poultney, Vermont, on the twenty-second of Novem- 
ber, 1828, John Emory Hoar 1 was the son of Hiram and 
Sarah (Smith) Hoar. He entered Middlebury College as a 
Freshman, and worked his way while fitting himself for Har- 
vard, where he became a member of the Junior Class in 1850, 
and supported himself during the two years of his student 

1 At the time of his admission Hoar spelled his name Horn 
I02 



PLATE VIII 








HOAR 

HUNTI NGTON 



HOWE 



HOOPER 
F. W. HURD 



Harvard Class of 1852 

life in Cambridge by teaching, being Sub-master in the Cam- 
bridge High School in his Senior year. At the Class Supper, 
when the boys were called on to declare their future careers, 
Hoar had already decided to continue teaching, and after an- 
other year as Sub-master in the Cambridge High School, in 
1854 he became the Principal of the Brookline High School, 
a position which he held for thirty-five years. 

Hoar married Ann Borrodaile Blakely in August, 1854; 
they had two children, David Blakely, born in 1855; and 
Frederic Albee, born in 1857, who died in boyhood. 

Mr. Hoar was a very successful teacher; greatly beloved by 
his pupils, he helped many of his students to find positions of 
responsibility and trust, and it has been said with truth that 
a number of the prosperous Brookline men of today owe their 
success to his encouragement both in word and deed. He 
resigned his mastership in 1889. 

In 1857 he was one of the organizers, and himself long 
Librarian, of the Brookline Public Library, being the first to 
hold the office; and on retiring, he was elected to a place on 
the Library Board which he held until his death. He was also 
a member of the Brookline School Committee. 

Mr. Hoar's first wife died on the twenty-third of December, 
1869, and on the sixth of July, 1871, he married Lucy A., daugh- 
ter of the Rev. Elijah Demond, who died in 1895. On the 
twenty-first of April, 1897, he married Mary Tuck Jones, 
daughter of Henry and Sophia (Tuck) Jones of Baltimore. 

Mr. Hoar took great pleasure in his Summer home at Saint 
Andrews, New Brunswick. He embellished his place by the 
planting of trees, and drove all over the country in search of 
native plants, finding many which had been hitherto entirely 
unknown. 

A Charter member, Trustee and Vice-President of the 
Brookline Historical Society, Mr. Hoar contributed to the 
Society a paper on Elhanan Winchester, and another was in 
preparation at the time of his death; his work was especially 
valuable on account of its accuracy, and he was much inter- 
ested in historical and genealogical research. He was also a 
member of the Masonic Fraternity. 

Mr. Hoar's death at his Brookline home on the twenty- 
ninth of March, 1902, was felt as a public loss. The Library 
was closed on the day of the funeral, and the flags on the 

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Annals of the 

Town buildings were at half mast. He left a widow and one 
son, David Blakeley Hoar, who graduated from Harvard 
College in 1876, and from the Law School in 1879. He is now 
a lawyer in Boston. 



WILLIAM STURGIS HOOPER 

William Sturgis Hooper was born in Boston on March 
third, 1833. He was the son of Samuel and Anna (Sturgis) 
Hooper, both names being well-known in the annals of Boston 
merchants. He was one of the scholars at the Boston Latin 
School from the age of eleven to fifteen, when he finished his 
collegiate preparation under John B. Felton (H. C. 1847) and 
his cousin Nathaniel L. Hooper (H. C. 1846), entering Har- 
vard with the Sophomore Class, although but sixteen years 
old. 

A boy of exceedingly quiet and in many ways mature tastes, 
Hooper always held himself slightly aloof from general society, 
having little part in the Class diversions, although he was a 
member of the Institute of 1770 and the Natural History 
Society. He obtained leave of absence in his Senior year in 
order to take a voyage to California and China in a new ship 
of his father's. He sailed in January, 1852, accompanied by 
his classmate Thorndike. 

Reaching home after an ideal year, Hooper attended the 
Law School during May and June, 1853, and in July accom- 
panied his family to Europe, himself remaining in Paris. 
There Upham met him, writing thence, in October, 1855, to 
Joe Choate: 

You would be amused to see me at breakfast with the venerable 
but somewhat impetuous Hooper. His enthusiasm is unbounded in 
regard to the study of French, of architecture, in short, in the pursuit 
of culture in general. His accent is tremendous, but his torrent of 
words is utterly amazing. 

His family came home in the Autumn of 1854, leaving him 
behind. A surgical operation for a serious intestinal trouble 
reduced him to an extremely enfeebled condition, and undoubt- 
edly laid the foundation of the tubercular disease from which 
he finally died. 

Returning in the Spring of 1855, Hooper devoted himself to 

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Harvard Class of 1852 

convalescence, and in the Autumn of the following year was 
well enough to go into business, forming a partnership with 
his cousin, John H. Reed, for the management and agency of 
the Bay State Iron Company, and soon proved himself a 
most successful business man. 

In 1857 he married Alice, daughter of Jonathan Mason, 
Esquire. Their only child, Isabella Wyman Hooper, was 
born in January, 1859, and but for his delicate health, the acme 
of happiness seemed his. 

From the first outbreak of the war, Hooper felt that he ought 
to go, but his added business cares (his Senior partner being 
much absorbed by the duties of his office of Quartermaster 
General of Massachusetts) and his own physical weakness, 
together with the entreaties of his friends, combined to re- 
strain him until the Autumn of 1862. 

He then offered himself as Volunteer Aid to General Banks, 
at that time under orders for the South, the warm climate 
and out-of-door life seeming to promise the essentials which 
his physicians demanded for him. Sailing from New York in 
December, 1862 he was first stationed at Ship Island, and ten 
days later was transferred to New Orleans, where he passed 
Christmas Day, and whence he wrote home interesting letters, 
one especially on New Year's Eve, full of tender thoughts of 
his wife and his little "Bel," even then, "if not too sound asleep, 
dreaming of all the presents which 1863 will bring her to- 
morrow." 

During the winter Hooper's time was given to the Seques- 
tration Commission, on which he did most of the work, al- 
though nominally the Junior member, and to whose valuable 
service General Banks thus testified: 

Among many patriotic officers to whose labors I have been in- 
debted, I recall with gratitude the memory of Captain William Sturgis 
Hooper of Massachusetts. He entered the service of the government 
in 1862 as a volunteer, without compensation, bearing himself all 
expenses attending his career. . . . The thorough mercantile edu- 
cation of Captain Hooper, and his extensive commercial experience, 
enabled him to render important services to the government in 
affairs connected with the civil administration of the department. 
The general direction of the business of the Commission for the 
management of sequestrated property, of which he was a member, 
was intrusted, among other interests, to his care. Important ques- 

I05 



Annals of the 

tions of international as well as military law, and of the commercial 
customs regulating trade in the staple products of the country, were 
involved in these transactions. All his duties were discharged with 
signal ability. His courteous deportment, sound judgment, and 
unimpeachable integrity, disarmed the opposition of interested par- 
ties, and secured for his decisions the respect of all persons. 

His duties, however, deprived him of the requisites which 
his physicians had prescribed, for instead of the open air life 
he needed, he was constantly shut up in a crowded office, and 
failing consequently in health and strength; but with undaunted 
courage, he never complained, and always tried to think him- 
self a little better. 

When at last the long-desired opportunity for active serv- 
ice came to him, in March, 1863, Captain Hooper found his 
long and faithful labor had drawn too heavily on his slender 
stock of strength for him to perform his duties on the General's 
staff, and after accompanying the forces on the first demon- 
stration against Port Hudson, he himself unwillingly realized 
that he could do no more, but still believing that his hour of 
usefulness might yet come, he left Louisiana upon sick leave. 
He lingered a few months, full of hope that he might live, but 
without fear of death, with unflagging interest in the history 
that was making all around him, and when he faced the cer- 
tain end he did so with resignation, and with faith in the God 
in whom he had ever trusted. He died on the twenty-fourth 
of September, 1863, at Boston. 

An uncrowned hero, a soldier who had never fought, Cap- 
tain Hooper in the faithful performance of the tedious duties 
nearest him, drained his life blood in his country's service as 
bravely as any who died on the field of battle. 

His name yet lives in the son of his lifelong friend and class- 
mate, — Sturgis Hooper Thorndike. 1 

FRANCIS SALTONSTALL HOWE 

Francis Saltonstall Howe was born in Haverhill on the 
eleventh of November, 183 1, the son of Isaac Redington 
(H. C. 1 8 10) and Sarah (Saltonstall) Howe. He fitted for 
college at Phillips Academy, Andover, and entered Harvard 

1 For the materials of this sketch of Hooper we are indebted to the Memoir by 
S. L. Thorndike in the Harvard Memorial Biographies. 

I06 



Harvard Class of i8$2 

in 1848. At Commencement he delivered an essay on Ethno- 
logical Studies. 

Having studied Law in an office in Haverhill for a year or 
more, he finished his course at the Dane Law School, and 
settled immediately after graduation in Chicago, which was 
thenceforth his home. Gifted with ability and a high sense 
of honor, and capable always of broad and generous views of 
every aspect of life, Mr. Howe at once met with success and 
made a place for himself in his new home. He was counsel for 
two of the largest banks in the city, and was moreover truly 
beloved and honored by all who came in contact with him, 
while his kindness and hospitality to the young lawyers who 
thronged to Chicago in the early seventies will always live in 
their grateful recollection. 

On his death a Memorial Meeting was held by the mem- 
bers of the Chicago Bar, at which many paid tribute to Mr. 
Howe's courtesy and genial nature, as well as to his public 
spirit and high sense of honor. One 1 who was frequently asso- 
ciated with him during the last years of his life says : 

I know his memory still survives among what was then the younger, 
and is now the older, generation of lawyers as an honorable, learned 
and successful practitioner. 

His sister, Mrs. Carleton, 2 thus wrote of him to the Class 
Secretary: 

He did not forget his boyhood's home, and almost always came 
on for a week or two's recreation and rest during the summer, never, 
I believe, failing to gladden the heart of our mother by his presence 
once a year, while she lived. He was eminently domestic in his 
affections and habits, and cared little for society. When, after his 
day's work at the office, he reached home, which for several years 
was four miles from the centre of the city, it was to him a haven of 
rest and joy, and city attractions seldom lured him from it. He was 
everything to his family and friends. A man without pretense or 
ostentation, hating shams, but thoroughly sincere, genuine and 
genial among those he knew and loved. He was a great reader, and 
preferred books of a philosophical or metaphysical nature; and in 
conversation, he would argue questions with great logical precision 
and acuteness. But pardon me for saying so much. I might go on 

1 Hon. Edward Ogden Brown. 

2 Mary Cooke Howe, married James H. Carleton of Haverhill, who bought and 
gave to the city of Haverhill the home of John Greenleaf Whittier. 

IO7 



Annals of the 

at length, but I forbear. I will only add that he was believed by his 
family and friends to possess rare gifts of mind and heart. And his 
honesty and integrity and purity of purpose were never questioned. 

Mr. Howe died at Haverhill on the twenty-fourth of Sep- 
tember, 1878. 

He married on the seventeenth of July, 1865, at Chicago, 
Fannie J. Fogg, daughter of James P. and Emily (Ware) Fogg, 
who survived him with two daughters, Mary Ware Howe, 
born 2 May, 1866, graduated from Wellesley College in 1888, 
now the wife of Michael Straus; Caroline Howe, born 16 De- 
cember, 1868, who was for two years at Wellesley, and who 
married George Packard. 

Mr. Howe's namesake and grandson, Francis Howe Straus, 
graduated from Harvard College in 1916. 



JAMES HUNTINGTON 

James Huntington was the ninth child of Jonathan and Sally 
(Hickox) Huntington, and was born in Vergennes, Vermont, 
on the tenth of December, 1822. His grand-uncle, Samuel 
Huntington, was one of the Signers of the Declaration of 
Independence. 

His parents moved in his boyhood to St. Albans, and there 
James combined lessons in English under Sidney Dunton with 
farm-work on his father's farm, later learning to make brass 
clocks in his brother's shop. Having increased his horo- 
logical knowledge by a further study of mechanics and watch- 
making, James embarked on a course of Greek, Latin and 
French at a school kept by one of his brothers at Perry, Wyom- 
ing County, New York, and transferred himself therefrom to 
Phillips Academy, Andover, where he passed through the 
Classical course, supporting himself by means of his trade, and 
in 1848 finally realizing his long-cherished ambition of entering 
Harvard College. While there he was elected into the In- 
stitute of 1770 and with unwearied labor he managed to re- 
main at College for two years and a half, but he was then 
obliged to leave for a time, and having bought a lot of land 
beside the Charles River, he cultivated it and built a cottage, 
resumed his College study and was admitted by the favor of 
the Faculty to a degree with the Class of 1852. 

108 



Harvard Class of 1852 

Huntington then established himself in business in Harvard 
Square, and on April second, 1853, he married Hannah L. 
Stevens, daughter of Asa and Hannah (Larrabee) Stevens of 
Kennebunkport, Maine. Their oldest son was born January 
eleventh, 1854, and having been named Jonathan Gurney, in 
honor of his paternal grandfather and of Gurney of '52, occupied 
the proud position of Class Baby, and was duly presented with 
the Class Cradle in the following May. "Let him [the baby] 
only say," the happy father wrote in acknowledgment to Page, 

that if each circumstance in life secures its own due influence on the 
mind, our best hope of this "representative" baby may be that by 
the distinction of this regal couch, which will be among the earliest 
and latest recollections of his life, he may be incited to become 
worthy of the fortune of his birth, an honor to their Alma Mater 
and the Class of '52. 

The father's hopes were not destined to be fulfilled, for 
although the Class in a body visited the infant at the Com- 
mencement of 1853 and all kissed it, the little fellow died on 
October fourteenth, 1856. Huntington's second child, Charles 
Asa, was born and died in 1856, but the Class Cradle, always 
deeply prized, was called into use for his daughter Eliza 
Prentiss Huntington, who was born October thirty-first, 1857. 

A man of ever active and enquiring mind, Huntington pur- 
sued his quiet way, writing numerous articles both in prose 
and verse, for he had decided literary ability, which he some- 
times printed for private circulation, but never published. 
One purpose he cherished through years of patient labor and 
simple self-denial, — that of making the lives of destitute 
boys easier by the founding of an especial home for their 
benefit. In 1874 he established the Institution known as 
the Avon Home, wherein needy children were to know the 
comforts and care otherwise denied them, but just as his life- 
long dream seemed realized, his entire property was swept 
away by the dishonesty of a fellow-townsman to whom he 
had shown undeserved kindness. The need for a charity such 
as he had planned had been realized, however, and the Home 
was immediately established as a Corporation under the 
State laws, Mr. Huntington having already given a deed of 
the estate and furniture valued at ten thousand dollars. The 
conduct of the neighbor whom he had trusted, who, in addi- 

109 



Annals of the 

tion to robbing him, tried in every way to asperse Hunting- 
ton's character, cannot have failed to cast a cloud over his 
life far worse than the loss of money, hard as it was to have to 
begin the world anew after fifty years of constant toil, and the 
blasting of his dearest hope, but with no complaint he set to 
work again, patiently and tirelessly, in the pursuit of his 
watchmaker's trade. He was an expert in his line, often 
achieving success where others had totally failed. 

He retained his little shop in Harvard Square until 1894, 
when increasing weakness obliged him to retire, but not until, 
"rich with little store," he had given more than twenty 
thousand dollars to the Avon Home and to the Home for 
Little Wanderers, a small sum, looked at in comparison with 
the millions often given in charity, but not in the light of the 
years of patient work with the small returns of his calling 
which it represented, for we have read somewhere of a "widow's 
mite," and one of the Class of 1838 tells us: 

Not what we give, but what we share, — 
For the gift without the giver is bare; 
Who gives himself with his alms feeds three, — 
Himself, his hungering neighbor, and Me. 

To none was the tie which bound him to his College dearer 
than to Huntington. "The Class Fellowship of those asso- 
ciates through the course in Harvard College is the most 
noble and generously fraternal relation I know of anywhere," 
he wrote to Denny in 1887; any word from the Class Secre- 
tary was a real source of pleasure; and in the last year of his 
life he presented to the College a valuable regulator clock 
which he did not live to see installed in place. 

In 1900 Huntington moved with his wife and daughter to 
Newton, where he died on the nineteenth of May, 1901. Two 
hymns written by himself were sung at his funeral, one of which 
we copy: 

Oh land of love and blessing 

Beyond this mortal vale 
In songs your joy expressing, 
We hear your welcome hail! 

The flight we trace but faintly 

From this dim, shadowy shore 
To realms where all the saintly 
In light walk evermore. 
no 



Harvard Class of 1852 

Throughout the night-watch serving 

Till morning rays appear 
The soul in faith unswerving 
Outsoars the farthest sphere; 

There, in the Home eternal — 
The one Almighty source — 
Flows on the life supernal 
Its everlasting course. 

And in the great forever 

The rescued ones restored 
Share with divine endeavour 

The one Life in the Lord. 

FRANCIS WILLIAM HURD 

The son of William and Mary (Parks) Hurd, Francis William 
Hurd was born on April fifth, 183 1, in Charlestown. His hobby 
during his College days was astronomy. He was a member 
of the Harvard Natural History Society and of the Knights 
Punch Bowl, and throughout his life was one of the most 
regular attendants at all Class re-unions. On leaving Cam- 
bridge he entered the office of Mann and Rodman in New York; 
returning in September, 1853, he studied for two terms at the 
Dane Law School, and in the ensuing year went into the office 
of Hutchins and Wheeler. After being admitted to the Suffolk 
Bar, in October, 1855, he immediately opened an office at 
No. 20 Court Street, and was duly qualified as a Justice of the 
Peace. A member of the Charlestown City Council from 186 1 
to 1863, he received the appointment, in June, 1866, of Asso- 
ciate Justice of the Municipal Court of Boston, and from 187 1 
to 1873 he was Assistant District Attorney of the United 
States for Massachusetts. In 1879 he was Master in Chancery; 
he was one of the Commissioners to revise the Massachusetts 
Judicial System in 1876; in 1898 he was on the Commission to 
revise the Massachusetts Public Statutes. Mr. Hurd was one 
of the organizers of the American Bar Association, and was 
himself a member of the Boston Bar Association. 

Judge Hurd was of quiet, social disposition, and although 
he had few intimate friends he was well liked by many. He 
possessed a lively wit, and to mental qualities, solid rather than 
striking, was united a truly judicial mind. 

He never married, and for many years was one of the best 

in 



Annals of the 

known figures at the Union Club. He belonged also to the 
Somerset Club, to the '52 Monthly Dining Club, and to The 
Colonial Society of Massachusetts. 

He died in Boston on the third of March, 191 5. 

SAMUEL HUTCHINS HURD 

The son of John and Persis (Hutchins) Hurd, Samuel Hutchins 
Hurd was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts, on the seventh 
of April, 1830. 

He attended the Public School in his native town until 1844, 
when he was sent to Chauncy Hall School, and there fitted for 
College. Immediately after graduating, he began to study medi- 
cine with Professor E. R. Peaslee, accompanying him to the 
three different Medical Schools at which he filled the profes- 
sor's chair, — at Dartmouth, at Bowdoin and at New York. 

Passing the summer months of 1854 in the Pharmaceutical 
Department of the Boston Dispensary, Hurd became assistant 
physician at BlackwelPs Island in the ensuing summer, the 
appointment being for a year, and in 1855 he took his degree 
of A.M. from Harvard in course. 

After four months in Europe, and a short sojourn in Somer- 
ville, he went to Philadelphia for the winter of 1857, and re- 
ceived his degree of M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. 
Returning to Charlestown, he became a member of the Massa- 
chusetts Medical Society, and in i860 was appointed Physician 
to the City Almshouse of Charlestown. 

During his residence at home, in 1854, Hurd had joined 
the City Guards. On 13 August, i860, he was commissioned 
surgeon of the Fifth Regiment, Massachusetts Volunteer 
Militia. On 1 May, 1861, he was mustered into the service of 
the United States and served with his regiment near Washing- 
ton and at the first battle of Bull Run, 21 July, 1 861. He was 
mustered out 31 July, 1861. 

Dr. Hurd married in New York, 4 December, i860, Lucie 
Van Alen, daughter of James J. Van Alen. Their only child, 
James Van Alen Hurd, was born 22 July, 1863, and died two 
days later. 

In 1865 Dr. Hurd was appointed City Physician of Charles- 
town and was also elected for a three years' term on the School 
Committee. 

112 



PLATE IX 









S. H. HURD KING 

McKIM 
F. P. LEVERETT W.C. LEVERETT 



Harvard Class of 1852 

After a severe illness in 1871, he broke up his Charlestown 
home in the hope of benefiting by a change. The result was 
so successful that he was able to return the following year, 
but the improvement proved temporary, and Dr. Hurd finally 
moved to the State of New York, living for a time at Coopers- 
town, and traveling extensively in Europe. His uncertain 
health obliged him wholly to discontinue the practice of his 
profession. 

He attended the fortieth anniversary of the Class, in 1892, 
and his letter to Denny after the festivity shows his warm- 
hearted love and pride in his classmates : 

I enjoyed myself so much, I wish I could have it all over again. 

I was glad chance placed me, at dinner, next to Gregory — what 
a sensible, substantial, intelligent man he is! We had a nice talk 
together. 

One charm of our Class is, they are all so unlike; not run in the 
same mould, — each different from the others — each with an em- 
phasized individuality. 

You must send me that refrain of the song you sang: "You may 
search the Quinquennial through." It is perfectly true. You can 
hardly realize how the Class appeared to me after an absence of 
years, — such a set of splendid men, worthy of the honor and dignity 
each has attained in life. I tell you, I was proud to feel I could be 
reckoned one of them. 

No one can look at Hurd's picture in the Class Book with- 
out a feeling of kindness for the owner of the frank, open, 
genial face therein portrayed, which was a fitting index to a 
character upright, chivalrous and true. After many years of 
failing health he died at Atlantic City on the fifth of February, 
1897. Bradlee notified the Class Secretary of the event, and 
the simple words are full of meaning: "Our dear Sam Hurd 
went to God yesterday. We shall miss him." 



JEROME BONAPARTE KIMBALL 

Kimball was the son of Silas H. and Mary (Evans) Kimball 
and was born in Southbridge, Massachusetts, on the fourth of 
January, 1832. Preparing for college at Phillips Academy, 
Andover, Kimball entered college in the Freshman year, and 
was a member of the Debating Society called The Iadma, 

"3 



Annals of the 

before which he delivered an oration. On graduating, he 
began to study law in Utica, New York, where his brother 
procured an opening for him, but returning after a few months 
to his father's house at Blackstone, Rhode Island, he decided 
to continue his legal studies with Thomas Jenks, Esquire, of 
Providence, and was admitted to the Rhode Island Bar 31 
March, 1855. He remained with Mr. Jenks for more than a 
year, being elected in the meantime Clerk of the House in the 
General Assembly. He early became a partner of Governor 
Henry Howard, and theirs was one of the most successful 
legal firms in the State. 

Ever since his schooldays at Andover, Kimball had been 
interested in debating, and as an ardent Republican he took 
part in the Fremont and Dayton campaign, making over 
one hundred speeches in six weeks, and in 1858 and 1859 he 
was Attorney General of Rhode Island, being at that time 
the second youngest man elected to the office in the State. 
He remained in office only until i860, when a paralytic attack 
forced him to retire wholly from active life. In the hope of 
regaining his health he embarked on a journey to China, and 
on his return, in 1863, was well enough to accept an appoint- 
ment as Surveyor of the Port of Providence, which he held 
until the office was abolished; he then obtained a position con- 
nected with the lower Courts, filling it until that also was dis- 
continued, in 1886, when he resumed his law practice to a 
limited extent, but although his mind was in no wise affected, 
he always remained an invalid. 

It was truly sad that a career of so much promise should 
have been prematurely cut short, the more so that to the end 
Mr. Kimball strained every nerve to rise above his physical 
disabilities. His gift for speaking was unquestionable, and in 
an address delivered by the Honorable William Davis he thus 
referred to Kimball in connection with the Anti-Slavery cam- 
paign in Providence : — 



In 1856 Mr. Kimball aided materially in carrying his State for 
Fremont and Dayton. Those who remember him, remember him 
as a platform speaker of great freedom in the use of language and as 
a close and solid talker, with a desire to instruct rather than to amuse. 
He had an abundance of quotations, and could be sarcastic even to 
rashness. 

114 



Harvard Class of 1852 

Kimball was a foremost member of the Franklin Lyceum, 
and enjoyed a wide reputation for his legal ability as well as 
for his success as a speaker. He was an important factor in 
the political life of the ante-bellum days, and it was his deep 
and conscientious interest in the issues of National and State 
importance that led to the overtaxing of his physical powers, 
which resulted in his illness. 

Kimball married on July tenth, 1856, Abby Viles Spencer, 
who died a month before her husband, on November fifth, 
1909. She proved herself a true helpmate in the hour of trial, 
when her husband was struck down at the acme of his success. 

They had two children: Helen E., born 8 June, 1857, and 
Arthur L., the latter of whom always showed the utmost con- 
siderateness in helping his father to keep up his associations 
with his Class, for Mr. Kimball was a true son of Harvard. 

He died on the third of December, 1909. 

BENJAMIN FLINT KING 

King was the son of Daniel Putnam (H. C. 1823) and Sarah 
Page (Flint) King, and was born in Danvers on October 
twelfth, 1830. He prepared for college at Gates Academy, 
Marlborough, and after graduating made the voyage to Cali- 
fornia and China, being absent for a year. 

He studied Law in the office of William Brigham, and later 
in that of Charles R. Train, practising in Boston, but living in 
Concord, Massachusetts. 

On September thirtieth, 1854, he married Abbie J. Farwell, 
daughter of John and Lucy Farwell. She died at Concord on 
September eighth, 1858. 

In September, 1862, King volunteered as private in the 
Forty-Fourth Massachusetts Regiment, the same regiment in 
which Ware of '52 was surgeon. After active service in North 
Carolina and elsewhere, he was commissioned Lieutenant of 
the Eighteenth United States Cavalry Troop, in 1863, and 
was appointed Judge Advocate on the staff of General Andrew, 
Department of the Gulf, being also detailed as Provost Mar- 
shal; rejoining his regiment in July, 1864, he served with it 
until it was mustered out in August. 

King resumed the practice of his profession in Boston on 
returning from the war. 

115 



Annals of the 

He died very suddenly on the twenty-fourth of January, 
1868, in Boston, leaving two children, — Daniel Putnam King, 
born in 1855, and Sarah Page King, the wife of Edgar Wood 
Upton. 



FREDERIC PERCIVAL LEVERETT 

"I was born in Jamaica Plains, Massachusetts, August tenth, 
183 1, son of Frederic Percival Leverett (H. C. 1821) of Boston 
and Matilda, daughter of John Gorham," Leverett wrote in 
his Class Book chronicle. 

My mother was a Cuban by birth, by education a Bostonian. I was 
fitted for College in Beaufort District, South Carolina, by my uncle, 
Rev. C. E. Leverett, 1 and entered College in the Sophomore year. 

Leverett's part at Commencement was an essay on "Grada- 
tions in Shakspere's Female Characters." On graduating he 
studied Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, taking 
there his degree of M.D. in 1856. 

His sympathies were with the South, and when the war 
broke out he volunteered in the Beaufort Volunteer Artillery, 
being afterwards appointed Surgeon of the Ninth South 
Carolina Infantry, later known as the Eleventh Infantry. He 
served in the regiment until August, 1862, when he was ordered 
to report to General Lee in Virginia, for service as Senior sur- 
geon in Dayton's Brigade. He was present at the Battle of 
South Mountain, and at the second battle of Bull Run. After 
the battle of Sharpsburg he moved to Boonsboro to look after 
the Confederate soldiers within the Union lines, and continued 
in service as hospital surgeon or field operator. 2 

He was stationed successively at Hospital No. 12, Richmond, 
at the General Hospital in Petersburg, and later was surgeon of 
Jenkins' Brigade in General Longstreet's Corps, whence he was 
transferred, in April, 1864, to the Fifth Texas Infantry, as Senior 
surgeon of General Gregg's brigade of General Longstreet's 
Corps. He rose to the rank of Major, dying at Hospital No. 12, 
Richmond, on the twenty-third of July, 1864, of disease con- 
tracted at his post. He was unmarried. On the back of an old 

1 Charles Edward Leverett, H. C. A1848. 

2 Harvard Bulletin, 23 June, 1909. 

Il6 



Harvard Class of 1852 

photograph in the possession of a nephew is written the story 
of his service in the Army, ending with the words : — 

He was a man of beautiful character. 

His truest epitaph might well be: "Greater love hath no man 
than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." 

WILLIAM COLE LEVERETT 

William Cole Leverett was the son of the Reverend William 
and Mary A. (Cole) Leverett, his mother being the daughter 
of the Reverend Cyrus Cole of Providence, Rhode Island. He 
was born on the twenty-ninth of October, 1830, in Roxbury, 
and was prepared for College by his father and Justin Allen 
Jacobs (H. C. 1839). 

He entered Harvard in 1847, but in the vacation of the 
Sophomore year suffered an attack of typhoid fever, so severe 
that his physician persuaded him unwillingly to give up study 
and defer his return to College until the Junior term of the 
Class of 1852, of which he was accordingly enrolled as a member 
on the twenty-ninth of August, 1850. 

Leverett took part in the Exhibitions of May, 1851 and 1852, 
and delivered a Dissertation at Commencement on "The 
Bearing of Progress in Science on Faith in Revealed Religion," 
the subject presaging his choice of a profession. 

Graduating with honors in the Ancient Classics, he continued 
for some months at Cambridge, taking a post-graduate course 
in Greek and Hebrew. In the Autumn of 1852 he became 
assistant in the Eliot Street School, Jamaica Plain, where D. B. 
Hagar was Principal. On August twenty-eighth, 1855, he mar- 
ried Cornelia, daughter of the Reverend John H. Ingraham of 
Augusta, Maine, and in November of the same year left Jamaica 
Plain to fill the position of associate Principal of the Berkeley 
Institute at Newport, Rhode Island, of which his brother-in- 
law, the Reverend Asa Dalton (H. C. 1848), was Principal. 

In the ensuing summer he was a candidate for Holy Orders 
in the Protestant Episcopal Church of the Rhode Island 
Diocese, and in 1857 was ordained Deacon by the Right Rever- 
end T. M. Clark, Bishop of Rhode Island. His brother-in-law 
having retired from teaching, he became Principal of the 
Berkeley Institute, and at the same time Assistant Rector of 

117 



Annals of the 

Trinity Church, Newport, receiving admittance to the priest- 
hood in March, i860. Three years later he assumed the charge 
of the Riverdale Institute, an Episcopal School for young ladies 
at Riverdale on the Hudson, where he was also the Rector of 
Christ Church. 

In the Autumn of 1866 he accepted a call to St. John's 
Church, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, remaining there for twenty 
years, resigning to become Rector of St. Paul's Church, Blooms- 
burg, Pennsylvania. Mr. Leverett's sphere of usefulness was 
by no means limited to the labors of his own parish. During 
his years at Carlisle he conducted a parochial school, and was 
largely engaged in diocesan work throughout Eastern Penn- 
sylvania. For fourteen years he was Dean of the Convocation 
of Harrisburg, for twenty-four years member of the Standing 
Committee, and for sixteen years its President, resigning from 
his pastorate and diocesan duties only when obliged to do so 
by failing health, in 1895. Thereafter he was always an invalid 
until his death at Philadelphia on the seventeenth of January, 
191 1. His wife survived him, and three children, Mary Parker, 
Anna Tate, and William Leverett, his son being a graduate of 
the Harvard Class of 1885. 

Although rarely able to attend the re-unions of the Class, 
Leverett always retained a warm affection for his College 
associations, and it was a great pleasure to him to be present 
at the Fortieth Anniversary. 



WILLIAM DUNCAN McKIM 

William Duncan McKim was the son of William and Margaret 
D. (Hollins) McKim and was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on 
the twenty-seventh of June, 1832. He was fitted for College by 
David McNally, but he did not enter Harvard until the second 
term of the Sophomore Year. He was President of the Hasty 
Pudding Club, a member of the Alpha Delta Phi; and at Com- 
mencement delivered a Disquisition, "Reaction of European 
Civilization on Asia." 

On graduating, he returned to his home in Baltimore, and in 
the Autumn entered the counting-room of his father, who was 
a banker. He did not take kindly to the occupation at first, 
evidently casting many a "long, lingering look behind" to the 
merry days in Cambridge, and it was a great pleasure when any 

118 



Harvard Class of 1852 

of his classmates turned up in Baltimore, the only other member 
of the Class who lived there being "Dave" Trimble. In a 
letter replying to one of enquiry from the Class Secretary, Page, 
in 1858, McKim says: "My life has been eventful enough, but 
unfortunately it offers no items serviceable for insertion in the 
Class Book. Suffice it to know that I have achieved neither 
fame nor fortune." 

Although his father was a strong Union man, he espoused 
the Rebel side in the Civil War. He was a captain in the 
Confederate Army and was killed in the battle of Chancellors- 
ville on May third, 1863. 

EDWIN HORATIO NEAL 

Edwin Horatio Neal was the son of Benjamin and Eunice 
(Daniell) Neal, and was born on the twenty-third of October, 
1832, at Newton Lower Falls, Massachusetts. After attending 
several different private schools, he was sent to the Boston 
school of Mr. William Hathorne Brooks (H. C. 1827), and there 
prepared for College, which he entered in the Sophomore year. 

He soon became known and was much liked by his classmates. 
He was a member of the Harvard Natural History Society and 
of the Iadma. He was a conscientious student and never missed 
a single recitation while in College. At the Exhibition of May, 
1 85 1, he gave a Latin version of Mr. Winthrop's Oration at the 
Laying of the Corner Stone of the Washington Monument; 
in May, 1852, a Disquisition, and at Commencement a Disserta- 
tion on the Suppression of the Order of Knights Templars. 

He studied at the Dane Law School after graduation, receiv- 
ing his degree in 1854, and thereafter continuing to study with 
his brother, George Benjamin Neal (H. C. 1846) of Charles- 
town, but his health soon began to fail, and in the hope that he 
might derive benefit from travel, he set forth on an extended 
tour through the United States. He visited New Orleans, 
Savannah and other places in the South, also passing through 
Milwaukee, where Norris writes that he had had an unexpected 
"sight of Neal and his ferocious whiskers." He returned in 
the Summer of 1 85 5, and died at his home in Newton Lower 
Falls on the twenty-fourth of August, 1856. 

"Poor Neal has gone at last," wrote Joe Choate, whose great 
heart ever held a place for all who fall by the wayside: 

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Annals of the 

Neal was a good fellow and his company was a pleasant thing for us 
always in Graduates' Hall. He was full of Class feeling, too, no one 
of us all was fonder than he of the Class of '52. He was one of the 
most conservative men I ever knew, and so a good citizen was lost 
when he died. I have always believed, however, that the day of 
death is better than the day of one's birth, and so be it that he lived 
like a man and died like a Christian, I could not have wished him to 
be kept here any longer. 

Neal had always been of those who "remembered his Creator 
in the days of his youth," and for such as he Death holds no 
sting. 

GEORGE WALTER NORRIS 

Before me lies a packet of old letters; some are enclosed in the 
thin yellow envelopes which were the first made, some are on 
old blue foolscap with the fourth page folded for the super- 
scription; all were written either by George Norris himself or 
about him by the friends he loved. More than sixty years have 
passed since he "left the warm precincts of the cheerful day," 
and yet, as we read these old letters, so imbued are they with 
his personality, that even to us of "another generation who 
knew not Joseph," the man himself lives once more before us, 
instinct with the charm of the intense, brilliant, whimsical, but 
wholly lovable nature which made him so dear to those to 
whom he showed his heart. 

He was the son of Shepherd Haynes and Elizabeth (Sewall) 
Norris, and was born in Boston, 30 November, 183 1. His life 
had been marked by no striking events, he wrote at gradua- 
tion; he was a delicate child, and received therefore little early 
education, passing his summers in the country instead of at 
school. He entered the Boston Latin School when he was 
eleven, "moving with them from the time-honored old building 
on School Street to the more spacious one on Bedford Street." 

He roomed alone during the first three years of his College 
life, but in his Senior year he was "tempted to try the joys of 
chummage" with Waring in the Holworthy Entry and found 
that it added greatly to the happiness of College life. He was a 
member of the Harvard Lodge, Society of Odd Fellows, of the 
Knights Punch Bowl, of the Alpha Delta Phi, the Institute of 
1770, the Hasty Pudding Club, and the Harvard Natural 
History Society. At the Exhibition of May, 1851, he gave an 

120 



PLAT EX 








N EAL 
PAGE 



OLIVER 



NORRIS 
PEABODY 



Harvard Class of 1852 

English Version of a "Eulogy upon Conde de Campomanes" 
from the Spanish of Don Joaquin Garcia Domenech; at the 
Exhibition of May, 1852, a Disquisition, "Japan and our Rela- 
tions with it"; and at Commencement, a Disquisition on 
"Robert the Second of France." 

He passed the summer of 1852 chiefly at home, at Newton 
Centre, not a little homesick, as were most of the Holworthy 
East Entry boys for the departed delights of college life, and 
the day was marked with a white stone which brought him 
letters from Joe Choate, Williamson and Waring. 

As I sat down to read them, [he writes Williamson] my little sister 
sat opposite me, and watching the pleased expression of my counte- 
nance and seeing my smile and hearing my subdued chuckle when I 
came to the "labyrinth" she suddenly burst into a loud sympathetic 
roar, and then recollecting herself, rushed from the room overcome 
with confusion and dismay. You can imagine how great must have 
been the inward pleasure which could have found so plain an ex- 
pression on my face. 

Such a doleful time as I had packing up my things on the Tuesday 
following Commencement, [he writes Joe Choate.] Alger, Cheever, 
Hilliard and Dwight were engaged in the same delightful task of 
moving, and if you had seen the fervor with which we rushed into 
one another's arms you would have thought that our affection, like 
some children, was too heavenly to live long. Are you loafing at 
home with nothing particular to do, as is my own case, and consoling 
yourself with reading Williamson's Poem, as I do? 

he asks, and concludes with a sympathetic enquiry for his 
correspondent's whiskers, — those hirsute appendages evi- 
dently filling an important place in the lives of their cultivators 
at that period. 

September found Norris in New York, where he and Waring 
had entered the office of Cleaveland, Titus and Chapman to 
study law. 

Anyone passing down Wall Street between the hours of 9 a. m. and 
5 p.m. [he tells Joe Choate], and stopping opposite 38 Wall Street, 
might, if he were to listen intently, hear divers groans and lamenta- 
tions as of a woman . . . and if his curiosity and humanity should 
induce him to penetrate to the office he would see, seated in the 
midst of admiring clerks, engaged in poring over the pages of 
Blackstone, the noble but toil-worn form of one whom Billy Bobby 
lovingly entitles "Noddy." 

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Annals of the 

Norris, meanwhile, made his home in the Waring household 
in Brooklyn. His letters continue to be filled with mention of 
his beloved classmates and with messages to those who were 
studying law in Cambridge. He tells of Coolidge's sailing for 
Europe, for he and Waring accompanied him down the harbor 
to Sandy Hook and the parting was a real tragedy to them all, 
especially to Norris, who was haunted by a premonition that 
Coolidge would never return, which happily was not fulfilled. 
He and Waring rejoiced in several pets, — a dog named Jack, 
who had to be sent away for discipline after demolishing Miss 
Eliza Waring's pet canary, called "Joe" in honor of Choate. 
They also had a canine friend hight Guppy who attached him- 
self wholly to Norris, after Waring sailed for Europe, and of 
whom his master writes Choate that "Guppy is well and would 
be pleased to have a bite of your leg." 

In May, 1853, Norris left the office of Cleaveland, Titus and 
Chapman and entered that of Mr. Waring, Senior, who was 
then Counsellor to the Corporation of the City of Brooklyn. 
He revisited Cambridge in July for Commencement, but passed 
the rest of the summer in Brooklyn varying the solstice by a 
few fishing excursions. In December he was admitted to the 
New York Bar, a step for which he modestly considers an 
apology necessary to his classmates on the ground that he 
knew really too little Law to be qualified for practice. 

Waring returned in July and the chums once more entered 
into partnership, and set up a "very nice snug little office" 
together at No. 91 Wall Street. Norris writes in September, 

You have no idea what a sudden atmospheric change is produced by 
the introduction of a few clients into the stagnant atmosphere of a 
young lawyer's office. The world changes its aspect immediately 
and life seems worth living, for which I must say, it does not before; 

and he goes on to wish that he and Waring might be successful 
enough to make it possible for them to tempt him (Choate) to 
come to New York and go into business with them, a wish very 
full of pathos when we think of what Fate held in store for 
each of the two friends. It was a real grief to Norris that an 
inconsiderate client, — and the firm was not yet "in a position 
to tell the clients to go to the devil or to refuse a hundred 
dollar job," prevented his going to Commencement and making 
a much anticipated visit to the Choates at Salem, but, save for 

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Harvard Class of 1852 

this disappointment, the year, his last one in New York, was 
a happy one. He had organized what was called the Norris 
Infantry, a corps of Tenth Ward policemen, of whom he was 
Captain, and whom he drilled weekly, with a view to meeting 
such disturbances as the well-known Astor Place Riot 1 of 1849 
with an organized force. We are sure that he was a popular 
leader and that the men all enjoyed the expedition of the 
Infantry to Turtle Bay where they contended for prizes. Life 
must have looked very bright to him in those early autumn 
days of 1855 when the young firm was meeting with a measure 
of success and more than all to one of Norris's tender and 
affectionate nature, when he was happy in his love, for he had 
become engaged to Eliza Waring, 2 the sister of his chum. He 
wrote to Choate that he had felt that there was 

nothing in himself compared with a thousand others to attract a 
young lady's fancy, but that feeling troubles me no longer, and if I 
did not feel secure in my happiness I need not tell you that the hope 
of my life would be gone. . . . I do not often speak of such things, — 
such feelings flow too deep and strong to often rise to the surface and 
be drawn off into conversation or correspondence. Jam satis. 

And then, just as the prospect opened most fair before him, 
came the first dread summons, — a hemorrhage of the lungs. 
Several years before he had gayly described a visit to one of 
the phrenologists then in fashion: 

The Bump-feeler gassed me a good deal and said that my mental 
development was too great for my physical and that I ought to go 
among the hens and chickens for six months, the result of which is 
that I have serious thoughts of turning Nebuchadnezzar and eating 
grass. 

Alas! therein the prophet of the cranium had proved his 
wisdom, for Norris had never been physically strong. His 
letters often contain casual mention of attacks of influenza; 

1 The Astor Place Riot took place on 10 May, 1849, and was the outcome of strong 
prejudice on the part of the Native American party, then powerful in New York, 
against citizens of foreign birth. A private quarrel between the American actor 
Edwin Forrest and the English tragedian Macready, and the appearance of the latter 
at the Astor Place Opera House, was the excuse for an outbreak of hostility to Mac- 
ready, as representative of another nationality, and the disturbance rapidly increased 
and became so serious that several lives were lost. 

2 Eliza Hackstaff Waring. She subsequently married Dr. Emilio de Luaces, a 
graduate of the New York College of Physicians and Surgeons, and a resident of Cuba. 

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Annals of the 

moreover, consumption was an hereditary disease, but his was 
a dauntless spirit, and when he found, on rallying from the 
attack, that he could not continue to practice law, he determined 
to try a mercantile life, and with that end in view passed 
several weeks in Virginia in the following May. Through all 
these days of what must have been crushing disappointment, 
no murmur escapes him, no word of complaint nor fear of the 
dread spectre ever hovering nearer. To his faithful friend 
Joe Choate he sends cheerful letters telling of all the classmates 
whom he encounters in Milwaukee, where his father and family 
were then living. He was deeply touched by the greetings 
which came to him from his old friends of the Knights Punch 
Bowl, who all wrote to him on hearing of his illness. At the 
close of the year (1856) he was again attacked with hemorrhage, 
but not lightly, nor without another effort, would he give up 
life and love, and hoping for benefit from a Southern climate, 
he went to St. Louis, and thence to Citronelle, near Mobile, 
Alabama. He grew worse rapidly during the two weeks he 
passed there, and realizing his condition, Norris determined to 
set out for New York immediately in the hope of seeing once 
more those he loved so dearly. He reached Mobile on January 
twentieth, intending to take the steamer the following day for 
New York; but his was to be another journey, and alone and 
in the night his brave spirit went forth to meet its God. 

I have no heart to talk with any of our broken circle, of any but 
dear Norris [Choate writes Williamson ten days later]. I was not 
shocked at hearing of his death, startled a little by its final abruptness, 
but I have n't seen him once since his first sickness without being 
satisfied that the hand of death was upon him. Still it is hard for 
me to realize that we shall see his dear face no more without any of 
the dreadful evidences of death, hearing of it only by telegraph and 
then, as if to contradict it, receiving a letter from his own hand a 
week afterwards; must it be really so? He writes to Waring (received 
yesterday) from Citronelle on the 15th saying that he is no better, is 
getting no relief, and has made up his mind to go down at once to 
Mobile and take passage on the "Quaker City" for New York. 

There is nothing in the letter to indicate that he thought the end 
so near, but I am convinced that, having met the dreadful fact in the 
face that before long he must yield to the relentless foe with whom he 
had been so long struggling, he made a last desperate effort to get 
once more among his friends and kindred, flying from that worst fate 
of all, to die among strangers. 

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Harvard Class of 1852 

A year ago, when he was sickest, his father with eyes full of tears, 
said that George was his favorite child, his darling, and, somehow, 
so I think it was with all of us, not that we loved him more than the 
rest exactly, but there was a peculiar tenderness in our fondness for 
him, a careful and anxious love, because of his manifest feebleness 
and the wonderful sensitiveness of his whole nature. That nervous 
delicacy, which made him appear as if his soul closed up like a sensi- 
tive plant at the slightest touch, did not suffer any great demonstra- 
tion of affection, but I know that he had a very warm corner in his 
heart for each of us. You have known what it is for those to die 
whose life was as precious as your own, but Norris is the nearest and 
dearest friend that I have ever lost, the one among the sainted ones 
that loves me best. 

Let us keep his memory always green and it will be the best bond 
to hold us all together. I know the tendency is, as we enter new 
scenes and form new associations, to fall away from old friends. But 
let us not forget him nor forget each other, and then I am sure that 
when we happen to meet — 

"The dear old memories, like the plaintive strain 
That dwells round lonely ruins, shall not jar, 
But pour a music sweet as silver rain 
And the old vanished forms shall all throng back again." 

Even in the old college days, through Norris's gayest 
moments, there had always run a minor strain as it were an 
unconscious presage of what the Future held. "Dear and 
incomprehensible Norris," Williamson called him; "he cared 
for few, but to those he gave himself warmly"; and in the letter 
of condolence which was sent to the Waring and Norris families 
by the Class of 1852, which Williamson was appointed to 
write, he says: 

I have him often in my mind's eye as he used to come into my 
room at the close of the day, often with something of soberness, 
almost of melancholy, in his face, with some quiet word of humor, or 
of sarcasm, with a manner which cannot be described, a peculiar 
mingling of gentleness and defiance, which never failed to allure us 
to him, and to make his society indispensable at any social meeting. 
Without taking a very joyous view of life, and few were the occasions 
which called out all his reserve of enthusiasm, he had so much feeling 
for its sentiment of pathos, such warm sympathy and love for his 
friends, so genial a sensitiveness to the beauty of nature, of art, of 
literature, that I fondly looked forward to the period, when with us, 
his old friends, still retained in his affection, he should be eminent as 

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Annals of the 

the 'Ik Marvel' of a future year, and be loved and admired by men 
and women that knew him not. 

With the remembrance of his death still fresh and uppermost in 
my thoughts, I went, on that last Commencement Day, to visit the 
old places where I knew him most, and which will always be asso- 
ciated with him. With changed faces his Classmates spoke of him 
who would never meet us nor join the ranks of the Class again. How 
altered then looked the once cheerful elms under the shadows of 
which we had walked with him in life's Spring, how gloomy the old 
halls and college rooms where we used to hear his voice, dearest and 
best friend! It is with deep sorrow and with such regret as cannot 
pass away that we realize that he is to go on with us no farther in the 
journey of this world, nor to join us ever again with his experiences 
at future meetings of the Class. May God help us to live as nobly 
and die as peacefully as he! 

Williamson thus concludes the sketch of Norris in the Class 
Book: — 

It is with a pang of deep regret, such as could not properly find 
utterance here, that the transcriber of the above letters puts this final 
word, like a stone above his grave, to the life of a loved and honored 
friend. He died young. To his Classmates and to the memory of 
College days he was ever loyal and true. He lived pure and un- 
spotted from the world. The recollection of his amiable virtues will 
embalm his name among those who early left the Class of 1852 to 
come back no more. How much that we had hoped for him has he 
left unaccomplished! How much more than we could ask or think 
for him may he have already attained before us in the world beyond 
the stars! 

"His leaf has perished in the green 
And, while we breathe beneath the sun, 
The world which credits what is done 
Is cold to all that might have been. 

"So here shall silence guard his fame; 
But somewhere, out of human view, 
Whate'er his hands are set to do, 
Is wrought with tumult of acclaim!" 

HENRY KEMBLE OLIVER 

Henry Kemble Oliver, the son of the Honorable Henry 
Kemble (H. C. 18 18) and Sarah Cook Oliver, was born in 
Salem, Massachusetts, on the twenty-sixth of October, 1829. 
His father had held several public positions, among which 

126 



Harvard Class of 1852 

were those of State Treasurer and Mayor of Salem. He was 
lineally descended from Thomas Oliver, who came from 
England in 1632, and was a Ruling Elder in the First Church 
in Boston. 1 

Henry Kemble Oliver, Jr., prepared for college at the Salem 
Latin School. In College, his chief interest outside the usual 
curriculum of studies was Ornithology, and he was at one time 
President of the Harvard Natural History Society, an under- 
graduate association. Chemistry also received much attention 
from him, and he spent many hours working in the laboratory 
of the Rumford Society. Here his classmate Sprague often 
joined him; the latter had been his frequent companion in 
chemical experiments in his boyhood days in Salem. As Cura- 
tor of Ornithology of the Harvard Natural History Society he 
made frequent excursions to Fresh Pond, where he collected 
specimens which he stuffed and mounted for the Society. 
At one time he had three screech owls in his room, which he 
had found in hollow trees, and fed them with frogs caught in 
the small pond then situated near the site of Hemenway Gym- 
nasium. Oliver was a member also of the Institute of 1770, 
and, during his Senior year, librarian of the Society, the books 
being kept in one of the sleeping-rooms at No. 2 Holworthy 
Hall. He belonged to the Odd Fellows, the meetings of which 
were held in the room of one of its members. This was a Fresh- 
man organization, and its President was Francis W. Palfrey, 
a sophomore, who appeared in cap and gown. The Secretary 
was William Robert Ware, and the invitation to join the 
Society was in this wise: "Bring thy unholy body to No. — 
Hall as the midnight clock strikes the hour of eight and it 
shall be done unto you as you desire." At the last meeting 
of this Society at the end of the- Freshman year an oration 
was given by Head, a poem by Coolidge and an ode by 
Williamson. 

During his Senior year, while rooming in Holworthy, Oliver 
asked for and obtained a few muskets from the Armory of the 

1 A few years ago, a mural tablet to the memory of Thomas Oliver was placed in 
the Nave of the present building of the First Church by Dr. Oliver, who subsequently 
bore the expense of a companion tablet commemorating Thomas Leverett, who also 
served, for more than twenty years, as a Ruling Elder of the Church during the pastor- 
ate of the Reverend John Cotton. Oliver and Leverett were prominent men in the 
Colony, and with Henry Vane, afterward Governor, composed the first officially con- 
stituted Board of Arbitration in New England, in 1635. 

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Annals of the 

First Corps of Cadets, of which he was a member, and invited 
several of his Classmates to form a squad; this he drilled in 
the evening outside the College grounds. He never knew 
whether the Faculty were aware of this procedure. Of the 
members of the squad, Quincy was one of the most enthusiastic, 
and he afterwards joined the First Corps of Cadets. Dana 
and Page also joined the Corps. 

After graduating at Harvard Dr. Oliver began the study 
of Medicine for which he had for many years exhibited a 
strong inclination, as shown in his fondness for chemistry and 
the natural sciences. About this time the Tremont Medical 
School was established and students instead of entering their 
name with a single physician, as was formerly the case, regis- 
tered at the School. It occupied a single room, up one flight, 
in a building on Tremont Street, a few doors from Pemberton 
Square. The teachers were for the most part those at the 
Harvard Medical School. In 1855, he received the degree of 
M. D. after an examination which at that time was very much 
less difficult than it is at the present day. The last year of his 
course was spent in the Massachusetts General Hospital as 
House Pupil, and at the same time two of his Classmates, 
Charles E. Stedman and Samuel F. Haven, occupied similar 
positions in the institution. 

Upon receiving his degree, Dr. Oliver went to Europe to 
continue his medical studies as was the custom with recent 
graduates in medicine who did not feel obliged to begin practice 
immediately. He first visited Paris, where there were many 
medical men who had acquired great reputations as clinical 
teachers, and where the hospitals contained an enormous 
amount of material for observation and study. Louis, perhaps 
the most renowned French clinical teacher, was then living, 
but had retired on account of age; Trousseau, however, at 
Hotel Dieu was then in his prime, and his visits to the hospital 
mentioned were attended by so great a number of students it 
was sometimes difficult to get near the bedside of the patient 
who was the subject of the lecture. The most noted surgeons 
in the hospitals at that time were Velpeau and Nelaton. 
During the winter passed in Paris, Dr. Oliver met several men 
whom he had known when a student at Cambridge, among 
them being Dr. Edward L. Holmes of the Class of 1849, Dr. 
Riggin Buckler of the Class of 1851 and Dr. John E. Blake of 

128 



Harvard Class of 1852 

his own Class. As was natural, he saw much of the latter, 
meeting him nearly every day either in his room or in some 
restaurant frequented by students. 

In the spring of 1856, Dr. Oliver learned that Vienna offered 
better facilities for medical study than Paris, and he therefore 
left Paris in the early part of June. Appreciating that he would 
be handicapped by his limited knowledge of German, he went 
first to Dresden, where he daily took lessons in the language; 
he also kept entirely aloof from persons speaking English, and 
moreover, went frequently to the theatre where plays alter- 
nated with opera. In this way he improved his knowledge of 
German so much that, upon his arrival in Vienna he was able 
to follow the lectures at the Medical School with ease. Dr. 
Francis P. Sprague (H. C. 7721856) and Dr. James C. White, 
(H. C. 1853), both of Boston, were already in Vienna and Dr. 
Geddings of Charleston, South Carolina, arrived soon after. 
The four physicians were closely associated during the winter, 
both at the General Hospital and in a social way. As he had 
anticipated, Dr. Oliver found the opportunities for study 
much better at Vienna than at Paris. Although, as has been 
said, Trousseau was a very eminent lecturer, Oppolzer at 
Vienna impressed Dr. Oliver at once as being clearly his 
superior. Beside attending the clinical lectures at the hospital 
he took private lessons on oscultation and percussion of 
Drasche, one of Skoda's assistants. Skoda was almost as well 
known as Oppolzer, he having published an important work on 
the subjects just mentioned. Dr. Oliver had, while studying 
medicine, felt special interest in diseases of the throat and of 
the lungs and had taken private lessons on oscultation and 
percussion of Dr. Henry I. Bowditch (H. C. 1828), then one of 
the foremost authorities on these subjects in America. 

During the winter, Dr. Oliver found the diversions of Vienna 
to be even more enjoyable than at Paris. At the Volks- 
garten an extraordinarily fine band of musicians, led by 
Edouard Strauss, played daily, while at the Opera House were 
to be heard artists of the very first rank, and there were also 
many beer gardens where good music might be enjoyed. 

The American Minister to Austria, Henry R. Jackson, was 
very hospitable to all of his countrymen who visited Vienna, 
and gave an evening reception once a week to those who chose 
to avail themselves of his kindness. Dr. Oliver and the other 

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Annals of the 

three physicians from America scarcely ever failed to be 
present on these occasions. 

The principal park in Vienna was named the Prater, and 
on fine days it was crowded with the best people of the city. 
There might be seen the late Emperor Franz Joseph and his 
consort Elizabeth whose marriage had taken place only two 
years previously. Although she was an accomplished horse- 
woman, she generally drove alone in a barouche while he rode 
■by her side. Dr. Oliver frequently saw the Empress in Switzer- 
land after the sad bereavements she had experienced in the loss 
of her only son by suicide and the death of a sister in a con- 
flagration in Paris. Her great beauty, for which she had been 
formerly noted, had entirely disappeared, and her face wore a 
very sad expression. 

Leaving Vienna upon the conclusion of the lectures at the 
Medical School, Dr. Oliver made a short trip through Italy and 
then returned to Paris via Marseilles, France. After a short 
stay in Paris he went to London and then to Liverpool, whence 
he sailed in a Cunard steamer for Boston. After consultation 
with his family and friends he decided to begin practice in the 
latter city. In 1868 he was appointed a visiting physician to 
the Massachusetts General Hospital, and soon becoming in- 
terested in laryngoscopy, was later appointed lecturer on this 
subject in the Harvard Medical School. 

Dr. Oliver was for many years Medical Examiner in Boston 
for the Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Company and at 
one time for the New York Life Insurance Company, and during 
the Civil War he was a Medical Inspector of Camps in the 
service of the Sanitary Commission. 

The Overseers of Harvard appointed him a member of the 
Committee to visit the Chemical Department of the College 
and also one of the Committee to visit the Medical School. As 
a member of the former Committee his experience at his first 
visit to Cambridge is perhaps worth mentioning. He found his 
way to an upper room in University Hall where he met the 
Professor of Chemistry, Josiah Parsons Cooke (H. C. 1848), 
and the class in chemistry, many of whom were in their shirt 
sleeves. The day was intensely hot and as no other member of 
the Committee made his appearance, Dr. Oliver retired after 
less than an, hour's stay and never went there again in the 
capacity of committeeman. 

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Harvard Class of 1852 

He retired from practice in 1880 and for many years there- 
after he spent the greater portion of each summer abroad. 
During this time he visited many countries in Europe and two 
in Africa, namely, Egypt and Algeria. His favorite summer 
residence has been Switzerland. Late in life he made a list of 
the august personages he had seen either while visiting their 
country or when they were making friendly visits to other 
countries. These were: two Kings of England, three Queens 
of England; the King of Norway and Sweden; the Emperor and 
Empress of France; the King of Spain; the King of Prussia and 
Emperor of Germany; the Emperor and Empress of Austria; 
the King of Greece; Pope Pius IX; the Emperor and Empress 
of Russia; the Sultan of Turkey; and the Khedive of Egypt. 
He has also seen ten Presidents of the United States, the first 
one being John Quincy Adams, who visited Salem about the 
year 1842. 

Dr. Oliver is the oldest living member of the Salem Light 
Infantry, having joined this Company in 1848 before entering 
Harvard. He was also a member of the First Corps of Cadets 
in Boston which he joined in July, 1850, and his organization 
of the College Corps shows his interest in such matters. 

In the late fifties, Dr. Oliver was associated with a cause 
celebre. A citizen of Ellsworth, Maine, met with an accident 
which dislocated the thigh. The efforts of the surgeons of 
Ellsworth to replace the dislocation were unsuccessful and the 
man was taken to the Massachusetts General Hospital in 
Boston, where the most strenuous efforts to replace the bone 
also proved futile. The patient then returned to Ellsworth 
and instituted legal proceedings against the physicians who 
had first treated him. He lost his case, and then began a news- 
paper tirade of abuse against them, which he continued almost 
up to the time of his death. Immediately after his demise his 
family wrote to Dr. J. Mason Warren in Boston asking him to 
come to Ellsworth and make a post mortem examination in 
order to determine the exact nature of the dislocation. Dr. 
Warren being unable to make this journey, sent Dr. Oliver. 
The latter upon his arrival there finding that it was not feasible 
to make a thorough examination in any reasonably short time, 
brought the pelvis and a portion of the thighs to Boston where 
he made a careful dissection of the parts and found that the 
dislocation was a most unusual one and one that it would have 

131 



Annals of the 

been almost impossible for any surgeon to diagnosticate. He 
afterwards had the bones set up, and the specimen is now in 
the Warren Museum at the Harvard Medical School. 1 

The medical organizations to which he has belonged are the 
Massachusetts Medical Society, the Society for Medical Im- 
provement, the Medical Observation Society and the Society of 
Medical Sciences. He is also a member of the Somerset Club, 
the St. Botolph Club and the Harvard Musical Association. 

But for the untiring patience, kindness and interest of Dr. 
Oliver, and his wonderfully clear and graphic recollection of 
all pertaining to his College days, it would have been impossi- 
ble to unravel the tangled skein of the Class Annals. 2 In regard 
to him his Classmates may truly quote Southey's words: 

There speaks the man we knew of yore, 

Well pleased I hear them say: 
Such was he in his lighter moods, 

Before our heads were gray. 

Buoyant he was in spirit, quick 

Of fancy, light of heart; 
And care and time, and change have left 

Untouch'd his better part. 

CALVIN GATES PAGE 

The son of Calvin and Philinda (Gates) Page, Calvin Gates 
Page was born on July third, 1829; he graduated from the 
Mayhew School in 1842 and from the English High School in 
1845, receiving from each a Franklin medal. After a few 
months in a store, he decided to continue his studies and went 
to the Boston Latin School, graduating in 1848, and entering 
Harvard, where his "habits were well known," so saith he in 
the Class Book. The death of his father in July, 1850, obliged 

1 An account of this case appears in Dr. Warren's "Surgical Observations, with 
Cases and Operations " (1867). 

2 Dr. Oliver died suddenly at the Hotel Brunswick, in Boston, on Saturday even- 
ing, the twenty-fifth of October, 1919. Had he lived until the following day, he 
would have attained the age of ninety years. His funeral was from the First Church, 
with which he had been connected for more than half a century. His munificent 
benefactions to Harvard were revealed only after his decease. They are recorded 
on a later page (430). See an obituary notice in the Boston Evening Transcript of 
Monday, 27 October, 1919, and Dr. Roger Irving Lee's Sketch of Dr. Oliver in the 
Harvard Graduates' Magazine for December, 1919, vol. xxviii, pp. 277-280. 

132 



Harvard Class of 1852 

him to leave College for a time, but he returned and graduated 
with the other members of the Class. He belonged to the 
Harvard Natural History and the Odd Fellows Societies, the 
Hasty Pudding Club, the Institute of 1770, and the Knights 
Punch Bowl. As the first Secretary of the Class of 1852, 
Page was entrusted with the Class Book, a folio volume bound 
in green morocco; on going away he locked the precious tome 
up in a valise and put the valise into a bath-tub for safety in 
case of fire! 

Having decided to be a physician he studied for two years 
with Dr. Jonathan Mason Warren (Harvard Medical School 
1832) and graduated at the Medical School Commencement 
of March, 1855, 1 reading a thesis on Asiatic Cholera. 

On October thirty-first, 1854, Page married Susan Haskell 
Keep, daughter of Dr. Nathan Cooley Keep (Harvard Medical 
School 1827) of Boston, and being the first of the Knights 
Punch Bowl to commit matrimony, and the first to become a 
parent, was henceforth known to the members as "Calvin 
the Patriarch." His oldest daughter, Edith, was born on the 
twenty-sixth of June, 1855. He bade the members to a feast 
at his house in April of the next year, and the scribe of the 
occasion, Robert Ware, reported that they sang the songs in 
whispers "lest an infantile voice might see fit to introduce 
original variations into the accustomed choruses." 

From March, 1853, to July, 1858, Page was visiting physi- 
cian at the Boston Dispensary, and on resigning, received 
the honorary appointment of attending physician; in i860 he 
became physician at the Home for Aged and Indigent Col- 
ored Females, and Secretary of the Suffolk District Medical 
Society. 

In August, 1 86 1, he was on duty at Fort Independence, 
Boston Harbor, as Acting Assistant Surgeon, accompanying 
the Eleventh Regiment United States Infantry to Perryville, 

1 Dr. White, in "Sketches from my Life" (p. 71) writes: "March 7th [1855]. 
Medical Commencement at the College in North Grove Street. President Walker 
and the Overseers were present. Dissertations, etc. ... In the evening a reception 
was given by Professor Henry J. Bigelow at the Tremont House." 

Until 1871 there were two examinations every year for the degree of M.D. for 
the Medical School candidates, one at the end of the first semester, or about February 
or March, the other at the regular Commencement at the end of the year. At that 
time, doctors obtained their medical education chiefly by studying with a physician 
of good standing, for about three years, and after attending lectures at the Medical 
School, presented themselves for an examination for their degree. 

133 



Annals of the 

Maryland, where he was in charge of the Judiciary Square 
Hospital at Washington from April to August, 1862. Al- 
though once discharged for disability, he returned to his post, 
remaining in service until February, 1865. 

He was one of the Harvard Examining Committee in Rhet- 
oric and Grammar in 1866, and in 1867 went to New York 
as delegate to the National Unitarian Conference. Dr. Page 
served at one time on the Boston School Committee and was 
instrumental in establishing military drill in the High School 
and the Boston Latin School. 

In 1867 he made a trip to California. Two years later he 
bought and furnished a new house on Marlborough Street. 
The number was 128, between Berkeley and Clarendon 
Streets, and it was then the last house but one on the 
street. 

On April twenty-ninth, the entire family, including the cat 
and the canary-bird, moved thither from the old home on 
Myrtle Street, where Dr. Page and all his children were born, 
and exactly "four weeks later," as his son writes, 

the cat chased the canary, and my father chased the cat. Reaching 
down to drive the offending animal from under a bureau, he rup- 
tured the gall bladder, and died three days later from peritonitis. 

Dr. Oliver recalls that Dr. Page diagnosed his own case, and 
that the post mortem examination confirmed his diagnosis. 

He died on the twenty-ninth of May, 1869, and the funeral 
was held the next day — Memorial Day, at his house, the 
service being conducted by Dr. Nicholson, the rector of Saint 
Paul's Church, who at the same time baptized the youngest 
child, Calvin Gates Page, Jr. 

Dr. Page had the following children, beside his oldest 
daughter, Edith, already mentioned: Hollis Bowman Page, 
born 27 October, 1859; Nathan Keep Page, born 19 January, 
1 86 1, died 21 March, 1864; Fanny Bliss Page, born and died 
in 1864, and Calvin Gates Page, Jr., born 9 July, 1866, H. C. 
1890, M.D. 1894, the only child now surviving. 

Dr. Page was Surgeon at the Boston Dispensary, Recording 
Secretary of the Massachusetts Medical Society, and a member 
of the Boston Natural History Society. 



134 



Harvard Class of 1852 



GEORGE AUGUSTUS PEABODY 

George Augustus Peabody, the son of George Peabody 
(H. C. 1823) and Clara (Endicott) his wife, was born at Salem 
on the twenty-third of August, 183 1. He was originally 
named for his uncle, Joseph Augustus Peabody (H. C. 18 16), 
the change to his present name having been made 25 March, 
1845, by a Special Act of the Legislature. He prepared for 
Harvard at the Salem Latin School, and during his college life, 
was extremely popular, being a member of the Hasty Pudding 
Club and the Porcellian Club. 

On graduating he studied for a year in the office of Nathaniel 
James Lord (H. C. 1825) of Salem, at that time the leader of 
the Essex Bar, entered the Dane Law School in September, 
1853, and received his degree two years later. Mr. Peabody, 
however, has never been in active legal practice, although he 
is connected with many private Trusts, and is a wise and 
clear-headed financial adviser. 

During his youth he traveled extensively in this country 
and in Europe. Mr. Robert Bennett Forbes, the well known 
Boston merchant, having invited Dr. Jeffries Wyman (H. C. 
1833), Mr. William Gurdon Saltonstall and Mr. Peabody to 
be his guests on a shooting and exploring trip to South 
America, they sailed, in November, 1858, on the brig Nankin, 
the first iron sailing vessel ever built in Boston. On reaching 
South America they boarded Mr. Forbes's private yacht, 
which had been sent ahead and in a small steamer which they 
carried on the deck of the Nankin, they made an excursion 
up the Uruguay River and the Rio Negro and into the back 
country. Leaving Mr. Forbes, the party finally went across 
the Pampas to Valparaiso, and returned home in July, 1859, 
via Panama, after having a most interesting and unique ex- 
perience. Certain game and birds, which had been shot on 
this expedition, are now in the Peabody Museum, Cambridge, 
Massachusetts. 

For many years Mr. Peabody passed his winters in Florida 
and his summers with his parents at Nahant and Danvers; 
since 1882 he has made his home entirely at his beautiful 
estate in Danvers, known as The Burley Farm, where he lives 
a very retired life, surrounded by relatives and friends who 
are devoted to him, as he is to them. 

135 



Annals of the 

In March, 1892, the Town of Danvers elected Mr. Peabody 
a Trustee of the Peabody Institute of Danvers, Massachu- 
setts, Incorporated, which position he held until March thirty- 
first, 1 9 16, when he declined a re-election by the Town. From 
1893 to 1899 Mr. Peabody was a member of the Building and 
Grounds Committee; from 1893 to 191 2 he was a member of 
the Library Committee, which entailed a great deal of work, 
and was President of the Board of Trustees from I April, 
1896, to 31 March, 1916. 

A constant reader, he has kept abreast of the times in all 
pertaining to science, history and the topics of the day. 

In 1896, Mr. Peabody became a Trustee of the Peabody 
Museum of Salem (founded in 1867 by George Peabody of 
London), and since 1898 has been President of the Board of 
Trustees, giving generously of both his time and money, and 
attending the monthly meetings of the Committee with un- 
failing regularity. 

A gentleman of the old school, as Shakspere says, 

the kindest man 
The best condition'd and unwearied spirit 
In doing courtesies, 

he is loved and honored by the entire staff from directors to 
janitor. He is the last survivor of the Class. 

Mr. Peabody married on the thirtieth of April, 1881, 
Augusta Jay (Balch) Nielson, daughter of the Rev. Lewis 
Penn Witherspoon Balch and Anna Jay his wife. Mrs. Pea- 
body was born December twenty-eighth, 1839, and died at 
The Burley Farm, Danvers, April thirtieth, 1888. They had 
no children. 

JOHN TAYLOR PERRY 

John Taylor Perry, the son of William (H. C. 181 1) and 
Abigail (Gilman) Perry was born in Exeter, New Hampshire, 
on April fifth, 1832, and prepared for College at the Academy 
in his native town. A Detur was awarded him in the Sopho- 
more year and in 1852 the Second Prize Dissertation. 

After graduation he was for a time Assistant Librarian at 
the Astor Library in New York; resigning in 1855, he studied 
Law, being admitted to the Rockingham Bar (New Hamp- 

136 



PLATE XI 



*V 








PERRY 


PORTER 


PH 1 PPS 


PRATT 




QU 1 NCY 



Harvard Class of 1852 

shire) in 1856, but he never practiced. Two years later he went 
to Cincinnati as Assistant Editor of the Daily Gazette, becom- 
ing proprietor of the paper in August, 1859, and, of course, 
making his home there, although he always came East in the 
summer and was at Cambridge for Commencement in i860. 

On November eighteenth, 1862, he married Sarah, daughter 
of Bowen Chandler and Susan Smith (Chandler) Noble. They 
had no children. 

Although not drafted, Perry sent a substitute to the war, 
and meantime continued at his editorial post in Cincinnati, 
sailing for Europe in 1872 as delegate to the International 
Prison Congress, and in the same year delivering an address 
before the New Hampshire Historical Society on "The Cred- 
ibility of History." 

He published, in 1879, "Sixteen Sermons in One," and two 
years later delivered a lecture at Lane Seminary on "The 
True Light of Asia." These are, of course, only a few of the 
results of his literary activities, but serve to show something 
of the variety of his interests. 

In 1883, he retired from the editorship of the Cincinnati 
Gazette and bought the famous old Gilman house at Exeter, 
which has since been purchased by the New Hampshire 
Society of the Cincinnati; it was Perry's family homestead, 
his mother having been the daughter of Nathaniel Gilman. 

His father was for a short time the oldest living graduate, and 
Perry replied to Denny's Commencement summons in 1886: 

I wish I could give you a definite assurance regarding my doings 
on Commencement Day. I am situated, however, just as I was a 
year ago. My father, the 0. G. aet. 97^, feels very well just now, 
and this morning told me he should want me to take him to Cam- 
bridge on what will be his 75th anniversary. I am inclined to think 
that his health or his courage will fail him when the time arrives. 
Still I must hold myself at his disposal, and if he goes shall have 
my hands full, — making a hurried call at Class headquarters at the 
most. So you had better count me out, or rather as present in 
spirit, and absent in body. 

Like the needy knife grinder, history "I have none, sir." I am 
writing for various papers and attending to Phillips Academy af- 
fairs, and otherwise comporting myself as becomes a sober, bald- 
headed citizen on the wrong side of fifty. Still, I am not so old as 
to be unable to sign myself yours as ever, 

J. T. Perry. 

137 



Annals of the 

There is a certain breezy quality which runs through all Perry's 
epistles, and which seems a fitting correlary to the whimsical 
expression on the face of the lad whose picture bears his name 
in the Class Book. In the note accompanying the cheque for 
the Fortieth Anniversary Dinner, he wrote Denny that he 
"certainly deserved the title of D.D., Dopium Donator." 

In 1895 Mr. and Mrs. Perry together embarked on a 
journey around the world, via Vancouver, and from there he 
wrote the Class Secretary with great enthusiasm of the beauty 
of the Canadian Pacific country. They returned in September, 
1896. 

Mrs. Perry died in the following year, and her husband's reply 
to Denny's words of sympathy shows how great was his loss : 

It is a fearful shock which has ended an almost ideally happy 
married life of nearly thirty-five years, yet I am trying to subordi- 
nate my own feelings of loss and loneliness to my firm conviction 
that the change has been for her eternal gain, and in devout grati- 
tude that she was spared the pain of a tedious illness. 

To the end of his life he was untiringly industrious. 

I am a pretty busy man, doing a good deal of gratuitous labor 
[he says in one of his letters to the Class Secretary], as befits an old 
citizen in his sixties. I am, next to Professor Dunbar, Senior Trus- 
tee of the Phillips Academy, having been elected in 1885. ... I am 
Senior Member and President of Public Library, having served 
twelve years, ... so you see that in retiring to my native town I 
have not gone into a state of hibernation. I don't want you to 
publish this stuff. 

Perry, for eleven years, was editor of the New Hampshire 
Journal, the organ of the Congregational and Presbyterian 
Association, and on the occasion of the Bi-centennial Celebra- 
tion of the First Church in Exeter, he contributed an his- 
torical sketch. He died at his Exeter homestead on November 
twenty-ninth, 1901. 

WILLIAM HENRY PHIPPS 

William Henry Phipps was the son of Samuel and Maria 
Dennis (Staniford) Phipps. He was born in Dorchester on the 
twenty-sixth of February, 1832, and prepared for College at 
the Chauncy Hall School. 

138 



Harvard Class of 1852 

Immediately after graduating he went to New York, and 
was for a time very successful in business, becoming, in 1864, 
one of the partners in the firm of Van Vleck Reed and Drexel, 
and making his home in Brooklyn, New York. In later life 
he met with financial reverses, from which he never recovered. 

A lover of nature, Mr. Phipps was long interested in garden- 
ing and agricultural pursuits. About 1875 he married Elizabeth 
Goodhue, widow of Frederick Goodhue, who survived him but 
a few years. They had no children. 

Although Mr. Phipps had been rarely able to attend the 
Class anniversaries, he deeply regretted, as he wrote more 
than once to Denny, that he could not 

add by my presence to the number of our Classmates who will come 
together on that occasion, with loyal hearts for their Alma Mater, 
and in that spirit of good fellowship which has always characterized 
our meetings. 

Mr. Phipps died in Brooklyn, New York, on the thirty- 
first of March, 1902. 



JOSIAH PORTER 

On a knoll, facing the parade ground in Van Cortlandt Park, 
New York, stands the bronze figure of an officer, erected to 
the memory of one who should long be held in grateful re- 
membrance for the sake of the great service which he rendered 
to the State of New York in the development and elevation 
of the National Guard. The man who is thus commemorated 
is Josiah Porter. 

He was the son of Zachariah B. and Mary (Kingsbury) 
Porter, his father being the keeper of an hostelry at North 
Cambridge, well-known in its day, and especially popular for 
sleighing parties, and in his honour the Cambridge station on 
the Fitchburg Railroad was long called Porter's Station. 
Josiah was born in Boston on the twenty-eighth of June, 1830; 
he prepared for college at the Chauncy Hall School, and was 
a member of the Odd Fellows Society; after graduation he 
studied Law, receiving his degree in 1854 and practising in 
Boston, where he was for ten years an officer in the Boston 
Cadets. 

On the twenty-first of November, 1857, he married Caroline 

139 



Annals of the 

Hamilton Rice, born in Southborough, Massachusetts, May 
fourteenth, 1833; the ceremony was performed by his class- 
mate Bradlee. 

The first of the Class to volunteer on the outbreak of the 
Civil War, Porter was commissioned First Lieutenant, First 
Light Battery Massachusetts Volunteers, in May, 1861, leav- 
ing Boston in April; and being mustered out in August, he 
was appointed Captain of the First Battery, Light Artillery, 
Massachusetts Volunteers, in the same month, and served 
until September, 1862, having joined McClellan before York- 
town, and having been actively engaged in the Peninsular 
and Maryland campaigns. On leaving Boston with his regi- 
ment, some of his friends in the Class of '52 presented Porter 
with a bowie knife, on the handle of which were engraved the 
Latin words signifying "Up to the hilt." 

In 1863, Porter met with a great bereavement in the death, 
from diphtheria within a fortnight of one another, of his two 
little sons, James, who was born in i860, and Edwin J., who 
was born in 1861. 

Resuming the practise of his profession after the close of 
the War, he moved, about 1865, to New York, where he was 
an ardent Tammany Democrat. At one time he was Judge 
of the Police Court at Harlem, but the great and increasing 
interest of his life was his work in connection with the National 
Guard, already referred to. His classmate Fisher wrote of 
him: 

He was for several years Adjutant General of the National Guard 
of New York, under several successive Governors. He is looked 
upon by the National Guard as the most successful organizer, 
living or dead, of the New York Army. He brought it to its highest 
state of efficiency as the most valued arm of the State Government 
in the maintenance of public order, and an ever-present help to the 
General Government in time of need; 

and Addison Brown said further, in regard to his military 
work, 

That was his secret love, and had his last devotions ... he won 
the respect of all his associates. 

General Porter died in New York on the fourteenth of 
December, 1894. He was survived by his widow and two 

140 



Harvard Class of 1852 

daughters, Mary, born 9 April, 1865, who married Charles L. 
Robinson; and Ruth, born in 1877, who married William E. 
Doster of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, all of whom have since 
died. 

There was a very strong feeling among General Porter's 
friends and Army associates that the memory of a man who 
had done so much for the safety and honour of his State and 
Country should be suitably perpetuated, and the measure for 
the erection of a statue was carried through the Legislature, 
the funds being raised by the National Guard of the State. 

The statue represents a tall and imposing figure of soldierly 
bearing, his hand resting on the hilt of his sword. It was 
unveiled by his daughter, Mrs. Robinson, on the afternoon of 
November fifteenth, 1902. 

EDWARD ELLERTON PRATT 

Edward Ellerton Pratt, the son of George Langdon and 
Abigail H. (Lodge) Pratt, was born on the twenty-fourth of 
December, 1830, and prepared for College at the school of 
William Hathorne Brooks (H. C. 1827). 

He was a member of the Hasty Pudding and Porcellian 
Clubs, and having decided upon Law for a profession, entered 
the Dane Law School. His studies there were interrupted, in 
January, 1853, by his sailing for Europe, whence he returned 
in July and announced himself, in the Class Book, as "heartily 
disgusted with foreign travel," expressing the belief that "the 
dome of the State House as it appeared to him, sailing up 
Boston Harbor, was the most beautiful sight of all his travels." 
Re-entering the Law School, he remained there for two terms, 
and after a year in the office of Clark and Shaw of Boston, he 
was admitted to the Bar in 1855. 

In September, 1856, he married Miriam Foster, daughter of 
the Honorable Rufus Choate, and their oldest daughter, 
Helen Choate Pratt, was born 26 November, 1857. "The 
wives of the Class," as one of the members of '52 wrote, "are 
but shadowy figures," but a passing tribute must be paid to 
Mrs. Pratt, who was for many years one of the most brilliant 
women in Boston, famous for her witty sayings, who will be 
long remembered as a leader of the most charming of Boston's 
literary circles. 

141 



Annals of the 

For a time Thorndike and Pratt formed a partnership 
under the name of Thorndike and Pratt, but the latter gradually 
withdrew from legal pursuits, becoming chief clerk of the 
United States Sub-Treasury in Boston, an office which he 
held from 1871 to 1880. The position of Sub-Treasurer was 
declined by him in 1879. He was for many years Assistant 
Treasurer of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad 
Company and in 1893 Vice-President and General Manager of 
the Gulf, Beaumont and Kansas City Railroad. During the 
last years of his life he was an invalid. 

Mr. Pratt was a man of unusual cultivation, and a delightful 
writer, the circulation of his writings, however, being confined 
to his family and intimate friends. A sweet and touching trib- 
ute to his classmate Revere, which appeared in the Courier, in 
1863, gives some idea of his graphic and graceful style. 1 

No better description of Mr. Pratt can be given than that 
written by his friend Miss Heloise E. Hersey: 2 

As I think of my friend Mr. Pratt, and of how large a place is 
left empty by his death, I am moved to recount some of those 
characteristics which made him notable. The first of these was the 
poise, of person and of spirit, which was his in every moment of his 
life, — the most intimate, the most exciting, or the most perplexing. 
Compared with him the rest of the world seems a scrambling, 
elbowing crowd, blindly seeking they know not what. The secret of 
sturdy dignity, whatever that secret be, he had found. Sometimes 
for a moment in friendly talk with him one would be overwhelmed 
with a sense of one's own disquiet, as compared with his deliberate 
calm; but in an instant his quick courtesy interposed to set his 
friend at ease again, and it was only when the hour was past that 
one recalled the glimpse of that still height on which he truly dwelt. 

Scarcely less rare was the candor of the man. He was truth- 
telling and truth-loving. He wanted to know the worst — and the 
best. His unusual accuracy of mind enabled him not only to desire 
to tell the truth, as does many an untruthful man, but actually to 
tell it. His clearness of vision helped him to see that at which a man 
of feebler gaze would blink. He was not afraid to look into the face 
of the sun, in a time when most of us are content to sit in shaded 
corners and talk about the sun. 

Closely allied to this power, and doubtless fed by it, was his 
marvellous memory. As he was never content with half knowledge, 

1 Under date of Monday, 20 July, 1863. 

2 Boston Evening Transcript, 28 November, 1900. 

I42 



Harvard Class of 1852 

his intellectual equipment was always ready to his hand. It was 
an experience not to be forgotten to sit in his generous library of an 
afternoon and see him go with a precision born of certainty to one 
volume or another to verify a quotation, to clinch an argument or 
to fix a fact. Books were his servants, not his masters. He loved 
them, but he commanded them. 

No picture of him would be complete without the glow of his 
humor and the play of his wit. He could wage a merry argument 
over the distinction between wit and humor and use both in the 
contest. He loved to let his humor riot about some social extrava- 
gance or some personal weakness until his hearer was in delighted 
laughter, and then a single shaft from his wit would prick the bubble. 

It was easy to think him a dogmatic man. He saw things so 
sharply that he had little patience with blurred vision in others. 
But one never knew the man thoroughly until one had heard him. 
say with the emphasis of true humility, "I want to tell you that I 
was mistaken in regard to such and such a question. You were 
right." He held his convictions tenaciously, but always subject to 
the revision of his open mind and his vigorous reason. 

He had that wisdom which comes with ripeness. He was not old, 
but he had lived through a full lifetime. Out of many scenes, many 
sorrows, many joys, he had gathered a harvest. The world gave him 
some of her choicest gifts, ■ — of love, of friendship, or experience. 
He was worthy of them. As I look back upon my picture of him, I 
find that one day he seemed to me most to be admired; another day 
most to be trusted; another day most to be loved. He inspired all 
these varying feelings, and he held them all by his steadfastness. 

Mr. Pratt died at his house in Boston on November twenty- 
first, 1900. Mrs. Pratt survived her husband, with two 
daughters, Helen, already referred to, now the wife of Charles 
Albert Prince (H. C. 1873), and the author of several charm- 
ing novels, and Alice Ellerton, who was born on August six- 
teenth, 1866, and who is now Mrs. Heman Merrick Burr. 1 



SAMUEL MILLER QUINCY 

Samuel Miller Quincy, 2 the son of Josiah Quincy, Jr. 
(H. C. 1 821) and his wife Mary Jane Miller, was born June 
thirteenth, 1832, in Boston. He was fitted for Harvard by 

1 See Harvard College Class of 1877, Seventh report, 1917, p. 42. 

2 For many of the facts of this sketch I am indebted to the admirable Eulogy of 
General Quincy by Samuel Arthur Bent in the Proceedings of the Bostonian Society 
for 24 May, 1887. 

143 



Annals of the 

William Hathorne Brooks (H. C. 1827), and in 1848 entered 
the College of which his grandfather had been the President. 

Soon after graduating, he began to study Law in the office 
of Peleg W. Chandler, City Solicitor of Boston, and in March, 
1856, on being admitted to the Suffolk Bar, opened an office 
for himself. He was Assistant Editor of the Law Reporter 
from 1859 to 1 86 1, and in the latter year was the first of the 
Class of 1852 to be elected to the Massachusetts House of 
Representatives. The first volume of "Massachusetts Re- 
ports," called "Quincy's Reports" and edited by him, was 
published in 1865. 

Quincy, meanwhile, had already shown his interest in mili- 
tary matters, joining the Independent Corps of Cadets in 
1853; he was appointed Color-Sergeant in May, 1854 and 
served for a year, during which period he was ordered out for 
three days at the time of the capture and rendition of Anthony 
Burns. In 1858 he was elected First Lieutenant, but he re- 
signed the command to "enter the Second Massachusetts 
Infantry as Captain of Company E in 1861. He was first 
assigned to General Patterson's command in the Shenandoah 
Valley, and took part in the retreat of May, 1862, and in the 
battle of Cedar Mountain in the following August. There 
Quincy was wounded in the foot and taken prisoner. 

In "A Prisoner's Diary," a paper read by him at the Offi- 
cers' Re-union of 1877, he gives an account of his experiences 
from which we quote: 

... in that instant I caught it, first in the right leg, then through 
the left foot, and in the same instant the enemy were upon us, or 
rather upon me, for what was left of my Company had gone with the 
rest. Though staggering, I had not yet fallen, when one rushed up, 
aimed at my head with "Surrender, G — d d — n your soul!" which I 
did. But if I had known then, what now I know, I would have lain 
for dead till they were gone, and then dragged myself slowly toward 
our side. (By special order of Jeff Davis all Pope's officers were to 
be kept as hostages to be hanged from time to time in retaliation for 
any such execution of guerillas as was threatened by Pope himself.) 
I gave up my sword and pistol, sat down, borrowed my captor's 
knife, ripped my trousers open and shoe off, and examined damages. 

After, with difficulty, preventing the Confederate gentleman, 
"to whom he then belonged," from operating on him, 

144 



Harvard Class of 1852 

two of them offered to take me across the wheatfield to where their 
own wounded were, asking at the same time what money I had with 
me for them. They did not offer any violence, nor offer to search me. 
Had they done so, they would have made prize of my money belt, 
containing over $90 in greenbacks and a gold watch. I gave them 
some ten or twelve gold dollars which I had in my pocket. 

Across the field they finally carried him, and laid him down 
among many other wounded, groaning men, where 

the men next me gave me water and a knapsack for my head, a man 
came along with a canteen of whiskey and I got a drink ... I got 
a piece of a wounded rebel's blanket next me over my shoulder, 
lay as near him as I could [for warmth] and slept. Once I was waked 
by some one attempting to pull off my seal ring, but he desisted 
when I pulled my hand away, remarked, "A handsome ring," and 
went on. Very likely he thought me dead, as my companion under 
the blanket was by this time. 

Quincy was awakened by the pain of his wounds, and at day- 
break succeeded in buying a canteen of water, which prob- 
ably saved his life. At night he was taken to a hospital where 
a surgeon bound up his foot, assuring him that he could prob- 
ably keep it, although he would always be lame. Thence, 
the next morning, he was sent to headquarters and ordered 
to Stanton. Their journey thither was a nightmare. 

There, "after acute physical suffering had in a measure 
given place to the prisoner's worst enemy, the leaden vacuity 
of ennui," he found in his "blouse pocket, a little duodecimo 
almanac and diary for 1862 with half a lead pencil," and there- 
with he kept a diary. Here, in their prison, faint murmurs 
from without reached them 

"Like hints and echoes of the world 
To spirits folded in the womb — " 

among them the report of a great battle in Maryland. Al- 
though their captors tried to give the impression of a South- 
ern victory, the prisoners hoped otherwise from certain signs 
and portents, chief of which was that the women had not come 
up to gloat over a victory to the unhappy Yankees; their 
hope, however, was of short duration, for the vulture-like 
ladies soon appeared. Five days later came good news at 

145 



Annals of the 

last, — that Pope's officers had been paroled, and soon after 
Quincy learned that through the death of Wilder Dwight 
(H. C. 1853) he had himself become Major of the Second Massa- 
chusetts Regiment. 

He tells in his diary of a friendly parting with a rebel sol- 
dier, adding "Note: I have experienced from rebel privates 
almost uniform kindness, good-fellowship, camaraderie; they 
treat one as a fellow-soldier." Early in October he "cooked 
up a document — a parole of the yard," the illustrious Chief 
affixed his signature, and they were admitted to the freedom 
of the yard forthwith, Quincy obtaining his first decent wash 
for three months, in the pond. On the sixteenth of October, 
having seen a newspaper with the official list of Yankees 
paroled from Libby, among whom were several of Pope's 
officers, he determined "not to rot another day as food for 
Confederate vermin without claiming his rights as prisoner 
of war," and demanded that he and all who were able to 
travel should be sent to Richmond to take their turn for 
parole or exchange. They were allowed to depart the next 
morning, and on Saturday he dates his entry "In hell, alias 
Libby Prison." On Sunday 

before breakfast little spitfire clerk came up to take our paroles. I 
could have embraced the little devil, but I did n't, only waited till 
my name was called, when I toed the mark instanter, and quite won 
his heart with the promptitude with which I recited my description 
list, insomuch that he asked me to take a letter to his sweetheart. 

After this, the wretched crew were packed into coaches and 
wagons, and after a miserable jolt of fifteen miles reached the 
flag-of-truce boat, where they passed two days before Quincy 
heralds his arrival at Washington with the glad words in big 
letters "A Free Man at Willard's!" 

In Washington he immediately exchanged his ragged habili- 
ments, including a torn Confederate cap 

(given me on the field to replace my broad-brimmed felt, which a 
Georgia gentleman fancied) for the jauntiest uniform procurable, 
after which I sallied out on the Avenue; and the first man I met was 
the Captain of the Commodore [the boat which had brought him to 
Washington] who at first insisted that I was mistaken, as he had never 
seen me before in his life; and only my crutches and wounded foot 
at last convinced him. 

146 



Harvard Class of 1852 

The entry made by Quincy in the Class Book on his return 
to Boston reads thus: 

1862 served as Captain until the battle of Cedar Creek Moun- 
tain, Virginia, August 9, 1862, when severely wounded and taken 
prisoner. Was confined in the Hospital at Stanton and the Libby 
Prison in Richmond until October 17th, when I was paroled and 
returned to Boston; was commissioned Major September 17th and 
Colonel November 10th, 1862. Having recovered from wounds, 
left Boston to rejoin regiment March 2, 1863. 

His desire to return to the front outstripped his strength, 
and he was so far from having regained his health that he 
was entirely overcome by the march to Stafford Court House 
previous to the battle of Chancellorsville, and therefore felt 
he must resign his position if he could not wholly fulfill its 
duties. On doing so he was appointed Lieutenant-Colonel of 
the Seventy-Third United States Colored Infantry and de- 
tailed as Acting Assistant Inspector General on the Staff of 
General Andrews, also formerly of the Second Massachusetts 
Regiment, who, after the reduction of Port Hudson, was 
assigned to the organization of the Corps d' J ' Afrique, in the 
Department of the Gulf. Colonel Quincy thoroughly enjoyed 
the position, and at this time compiled the little book for the 
use of the recruits in his regiment, called a Manual of Camp 
and Garrison Duty, which was of such assistance to the Junior 
Officers of the garrison that the latter was called "the West 
Point of the Mississippi." 

Colonel Quincy was President of an Examining Board for 
colored troops at Baton Rouge and subsequently at New 
Orleans. He was Colonel of the Ninety-Sixth and after con- 
solidation, Colonel of the Eighty-First United States Colored 
Infantry, commanding the Regiment during the New Orleans 
riot of 1866. He enjoyed his sojourn in that city; having 
always been interested in the study of languages, he seized the 
opportunity to board with a French family, and he also used 
his leisure for studying German. He was amused at being 
appointed Acting Mayor of New Orleans by General Banks, 
and wrote home "if it pleases you to have another Mayor 
Quincy in the family, soyez-en heureux" He was also Presi- 
dent of the United States Claims Commission, and in 1866 re- 

H7 



Annals of the 

ceived the brevet of Brigadier General "for gallant services 
during the war." 

After leaving the Army, General Quincy passed eighteen 
months in Europe in the hope of regaining his health, but it 
was permanently shattered, and he was never able to resume 
the practice of Law. No name in the history of the old Colony 
of Massachusetts Bay is better known than that of Quincy; 
none is more associated with the honor and fame of Massa- 
chusetts and her capital, and it was fitting that this scion of 
the race should find his chief interest in the needs of Boston 
and the preservation of the landmarks of her history. Well 
did Holmes write of the race: 

Ay! since the galloping Normans came, 
England's annals have known [his] name: 
And still to the three-hilled rebel town 
Dear is that ancient name's renown, 
For many a civic wreath they won, 
The youthful sire and the gray-haired son. 

Public spirited in the highest sense of the word, General 
Quincy, after his return in 1868, was again elected to the 
House of Representatives, and was Alderman of Boston in 
1873 and 1875. He also renewed his connection with the 
Cadets, serving for three years as private, and again for one 
year in 1879. "His idea was that every Boston gentleman was 
bound to give a certain amount of time and effort to service 
with the Corps of Cadets;" and his friend Air. Bent says, in 
the Eulogy 1 from which we have so largely quoted, "He 
became very impatient when he saw scores of young fellows 
unable to grasp the high motives that led him to think as he 
did," and the "Manual of Camp and Garrison Duty" pre- 
pared by him when with the Colored Infantry was of great 
use to the Corps. He never forgot his connection with the 
Corps dAfrique, and in a speech in the Massachusetts House 
of Representatives in 1872 censuring Sumner's proposition, 
in the United States Senate, that the names of battles with 
our fellow-citizens shall not be contained in the Army Register 
or placed under the regimental colors of the United States, 
he opposed the passage of the resolution partly because he 

1 Eulogy on Samuel Miller Quincy by Samuel Arthur Bent. 
I48 



Harvard Class of 1852 

did not believe, as a citizen and a soldier, that the time had 
arrived to wipe out the names, not of victories, but of actions 
in which the United States troops had been engaged; and he 
recalled the time when the order was issued specifying the 
regiments entitled to inscribe Port Hudson on their colors, 
and two negro regiments were ignored, although the Seventy- 
Third United States Colored Infantry had highly distin- 
guished itself in the first bloody repulse at Fort Hudson, lost 
heavily, and been highly praised by the Commanding General. 
General Quincy at once addressed a petition to the Secretary 
of War and Port Hudson was inscribed upon the blood-stained 
flag of the Seventy-Third. 

General Quincy's motto might well have been Civis Bos- 
toniensis sum, for his heart was with the City of his birth, 
and his pen was always ready when any question arose of 
despoiling its landmarks or infringing the rights of the 
Common. At the time the suggestion was made of building 
the new Courthouse on the Common, Quincy replied : 

This spot of verdure and foliage in the heart of your city is vacant 
of buildings for the simple reason that it does not belong to trade 
to pile bricks and granite on in order to make men richer; . . . 
but it is the people's Common, in which the millionaire has no ad- 
vantage over the poorest citizen and which has been enjoyed by the 
ancestors of both ever since the days of the parson who used to ride 
his brindled bull over it, two centuries ago. 

General Quincy was a vigorous advocate of the founding of 
the Boston Antiquarian Club, and was its first President, in 
1880, retiring in 188 1 to become the Secretary and Treasurer; 
and he succeeded in securing the preservation of the Old State 
House, whose destruction was desired by the so-called March 
of Progress. 

In December of the same year the Bostonian Society was 
founded, and the Boston Antiquarian Club transferred thereto 
its property and itself disbanded. General Quincy was in- 
terested in the War Records of the Military Historical Society 
of Massachusetts; he was a member of the Loyal Legion and 
succeeded his father as Trustee of the Perkins Institution for 
the Blind. 

His brave service in the War was appreciated by his class- 
mates, who in 1863 gave him a dinner on one of his visits to 

149 



Annals of the 

Boston, the originators of the plan being Thorndike, Hurd, 
Williamson, D. E. Ware, Dana, Thayer and W. R. Ware. 

General Quincy had always been an ardent skater; he told 
one of his friends that his first thought when he was wounded 
in the foot was that he might never be able to skate again, 
and on his recovery, after having been for many months a 
cripple, he looked forward from his summer sojourn in New 
Orleans to coming home at skating time; and during the last 
year of his life he was Secretary of the Boston Skating Club. 

Not all who give their lives for their country die on the 
field of battle. Harder in many ways is the fate of him who, 
with health forever shattered by the hardships of war, must 
drag through long days of pain and "nights devoid of ease" 
with no hope of relief. Such was the fate of General Quincy. 
He suffered and was strong; to the last he labored for all that 
tended to his country's weal; no complaint escaped him, and 
not even his intimate friends realized how incessant was the 
pain he bore so bravely, and which during the last months of 
his life became unendurable. He died at Keene, New Hamp- 
shire, on March twenty-fourth, 1887. 

"Wherever a noble deed is done, 
There are the souls of our heroes stirred; 
Wherever a field for truth is won, 
There are our heroes' voices heard. 

Their armor rings on a fairer field 

Than Greek or Trojan ever trod, 

For Freedom's sword is the blade they wield, 

And the light above them the soul of God!" 

PAUL JOSEPH REVERE 

Paul Joseph Revere, namesake and grandson of him whose 
name holds almost the first place in the hearts of the school 
children of this country, was born in Boston on the tenth of 
September, 1832, the fourth son of Joseph Warren and Mary 
(Robbins) Revere. 

Descended on his father's side from French Huguenots, who 
fled to this country after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, 
he inherited from his mother's family the blood of the saintly 
Anne Hutchinson. 

150 



PLATEXII 









REVERE RICHARDSON 

RODGERS 
SEARS SILSBEE 



Harvard Class of 1852 

At the age of eight he was first sent to school at the Milton 
Academy, remaining there for four years; his preparatory 
education was afterward variously conducted, terminating 
with six months' study under John Brooks Felton (H. C. 1847) 
of Cambridge, previous to his entering Harvard at the second 
term of the Sophomore year. 

At College he was a member of the Hasty Pudding and 
Porcellian Clubs, and it can hardly be considered very repre- 
hensible if the merry lads of sixteen, of whom he became 
leader, found play more attractive than study. A boyish 
frolic ended in Revere's suspension for six months, a period of 
time which he passed in the household of the Rev. William 
Parsons Lunt (H. C. 1823) of Quincy, — a happy and im- 
proving sojourn, which made a lasting impression upon his 
character and after life. 

In the summer of 1854 his father wished him to go to 
Lake Superior with a view to obtaining information about the 
copper to be found in that region, and as he had long loved 
the outdoor life of Moosehead Lake and the Adirondacks, 
the expedition was one after his own heart. He was crossing 
the Lake with two gentlemen, interested like himself in a 
copper mine on the farther shore, when the following incident 
occurred. 

Revere of Boston, Mr. Kershaw, a clerk, and Dr. Pratt, a physi- 
cian to the Minnesota mine, left Portage Lake for Eagle River. On 
reaching Lake Superior they found a severe gale blowing, and a 
heavy sea tumbling in from the Lake. It was with much difficulty 
they launched the canoe in the surf. But once out, and the wind 
subsiding, they ran rapidly and safely some six miles; but when 
abreast a bold, rocky shore, where the reef makes out a mile and a 
half, the wind suddenly freshened. A high sea broke over the reef, 
instantly swamping the canoe, which at the same moment cap- 
sized, throwing all out to some distance. Mr. Kershaw and the 
younger boatman, unable to swim, sank immediately. The other 
three, regaining the canoe, clung to the side. Soon Dr. Pratt, a 
powerful swimmer, thinking he could reach the shore, struck off, 
but suddenly went down within half a mile of the canoe. Mr. Revere 
and Robiscault, the elder boatman, after clinging two hours to the 
canoe, regained the shore. To Mr. Revere's courage and presence of 
mind is due both his own and Robiscault's preservation; and had 
Dr. Pratt followed his entreaties, and remained by the boat, he might 
also have been saved. 

151 



Annals of the 

Robiscault, an old boatman, and an aged man, repeatedly gave up 
all hope, and was with difficulty persuaded to maintain his hold, 
and says he owes his life to the persuasions and constant assurances 
of Mr. Revere, that they would reach the land in safety. He relates 
that, holding on himself to one end of the canoe, Mr. Revere 
grasped the thwarts at the other, and, throwing himself on his back, 
swam the frail bark with rapid and undeviating course to land, dis- 
tant a mile and a half, and finally dragged him, half unconscious, on 
the beach. 1 

Of this terrible experience Revere rarely spoke, but from it the 
youth came forth a man. 

Although he took a course at Comer's Commercial School 
in Boston, and considered several occupations, not for some 
time did he "find his star," and the period of indecision as to 
his future career was fraught with much trial. In the Autumn 
of 1855, however, a large wharf belonging to his father was 
burnt over, and consequently required rebuilding. Paul as- 
sumed the superintendence of this important business, and 
that being accomplished, continued to take charge of the 
property. The occupation brought him into frequent contact 
with the poor and suffering, in whom his interest was untir- 
ing, his help unfailing, and many a destitute child, many a 
young girl neglected and sore beset with temptation, had 
cause to bless his name. 

On March seventeenth, 1859, Revere married Lucretia 
Watson Lunt, daughter of Rev. Dr. Lunt of Quincy, and the 
young couple soon moved into a house on Tremont Street, 
Boston, where their first child, Frank Dabney, was born. 
Here passed two happy years. With a wonderful power for 
impersonating any character which interested him, Revere 
was a successful actor in private theatricals, and he was a 
member also of a little social club, "The Terrapin," where his 
small son's health was drunk soon after his arrival on the stage 
of life. 

Then came the firing on Fort Sumter, and once again "in 
the hour of darkness and peril and need," as more than eighty 
years before in the history of our land, a Revere answered his 
country's call; but only from a deep conviction of duty could 
he have brought himself to leave his wife and little son, the 
father, bowed with the weight of fourscore years, and the 

1 New York Times. 
152 



Harvard Class of 1852 

mother, who would fain have restrained him until he said, "I 
shall feel humbled if I stay at home"; then, Spartan-like, she 
answered, "Do as you think right." 

He and his brother l were both in the Twentieth Regiment 
of Massachusetts Volunteers, — he as Major, his brother as 
Surgeon. 

"Yea, many a tie through iteration sweet 
Strove to detain their fatal feet; 
And yet the enduring half they chose, 
Whose choice decides a man's life — slave or king? 
The invisible things of God before the seen and known. 
Therefore their memory inspiration blows 
With echoes gathering on from zone to zone." 

Eleven of his friends presented him with a sword, belt and 
knot; the sword was taken from him at the battle of Ball's 
Bluff, but ten years later was returned to his family through 
the courtesy of a Confederate officer, whose name unfortu- 
nately was never known to them. 

The Regiment was ordered to Washington early in Septem- 
ber, and thence to Poolesville, Maryland, where they did 
picket and outpost duty until Sunday, October twentieth, 
when they were despatched to Harrison's Island, preliminary 
to the battle of Ball's Bluff. About noontime of the ensuing 
day they were ordered to cross the river; the battle and defeat 
followed, and Major Revere, although slightly wounded in the 
leg, was one of the last to leave the field. The only means of 
escape was by boats, and he with several officers, his brother, 
Surgeon Revere, and some others, secured a craft which they 
were obliged to abandon, on account of being observed by the 
enemy, and failing in their attempt to build a raft from fence 
rails, they were discovered in the early evening by a party of 
the enemy's cavalry and forced to surrender. Major Revere, 
being an excellent swimmer, might easily have swum to the 
opposite shore and thereby escaped, but that he was unwill- 
ing to forsake his commander, an elderly man who could not 
swim. The prisoners were conveyed to Leesburg, and a long 
and weary march through deep mud and pouring rain to 
Richmond followed. One small wagon accompanied them, 
to be used by the sick and wounded, an inadequate means of 

1 Edward Hutchinson Robbins Revere, M.D. (Harvard Medical School 1849). 

153 



Annals of the 

transportation, of which Major Revere refused to avail him- 
self, although suffering from his wound. 

Prison life at Richmond was a period of discomfort and 
trial, but he never complained, and the last words with which 
he parted from his brother, Dr. Revere, on being removed to 
another jail, were, "Remember, whatever may happen, it is 
all right." The days passed until November tenth, when 
Major Revere was selected for one of the hostages to be trans- 
ferred to Henrico County Prison to answer with their lives for 
the safety of the Rebel privateersmen, held by the United 
States Government. 

In a cell, eleven by seventeen feet, dimly lighted, and in- 
fested with vermin, he and six other men lived through four 
months of horror, mitigated only by a daily half hour in the 
prison yard. To a man born and bred as Paul Revere had 
been, the mere physical discomforts of his incarceration must 
have been unspeakably revolting, but the only cry ever wrung 
from his great heart, was when he heard the agonized shrieks 
and moans of a woman who was being lashed just outside the 
walls of his prison. 

Every morning during his confinement in his loathsome 
quarters at Henrico County Prison, he and Colonel Lee read 
service from the Prayer Book, and he found solace in carry- 
ing sugar and other dainties to the poor negro children in the 
dirty cell beneath his own. 

On February twenty-eighth, he and his brother, two worn 
and prematurely old men, reached their homes at last, having 
been released on parole, and Major Revere was greeted by 
the glad tidings of the birth of his little daughter Pauline. 
After two months of rest, with recruited health, his eagerness 
to return to his post led him to apply to Secretary Stanton. 
At Fort Warren he had selected three Confederate officers, 
who he asked might be exchanged for himself, his brother 
and Colonel Lee. His request was granted, and on the second 
of May, 1862, with Dr. Revere and Colonel Lee he reported 
for duty with their Regiment, then before Yorktown, reach- 
ing there in time to aid in the planting of their Regimental 
colors on the heights when the place was evacuated. 

We must pass briefly over the later days. Severely wounded 
at Antietam, Colonel Revere was obliged to return home for 
a time, until he had recovered his health, but May, 1863, 

154 



Harvard Class of 1852 

found him again with his old Regiment of which he had in the 
meanwhile been appointed Colonel. With them he marched 
to his last battle, that of Gettysburg; on July second, at about 
six o'clock, he was struck by a shot from a bursting canister 
near by, which penetrated to the vital parts and caused his 
death two days later, but at least he lived to know that the 
victory was with the Union. 

"The graceful, gallant Paul Revere has fallen" we read in 
the New York Tribune of July fourteenth, 1863; 

He was more like one of the "gentle knights" of Spencer's "Fairy 
Queen" (all courtesy, honour, affection and magnanimity), than 
like even the worthiest, cleverest and bravest of this generation; 
handsome, sensitive, affectionate and courteous, v/ith that kind of 
courage which we call knightly, from our ideal of the hero who dis- 
likes and despises violence and" brute force for its own sake, but 
worships honor, and cannot do or suffer or permit anything that 
conflicts with that, or that does injury to the just rights or feelings 
of another. At school, in college, in society, around the family 
hearth, in the camp, in the field of battle, in prison a hostage for 
threatened lives, he was always the same. All knew what he would 
do and say. The highest and best was expected of him; and he 
always did and said what satisfied the noblest aspirations. 

Thus passed that "veray parfit gentil knight," Colonel Paul 
Joseph Revere. 1 

HORACE RICHARDSON 

Horace Richardson was the son of Asa and Elizabeth 
(Bird) Richardson, and was born in Boston on the seventh of 
January, 1830. 

He attended a private school in Harvard Place, and also 
the English High School before studying for two years at the 
Latin School, where he prepared for college. A member of 
the Odd Fellows, Natural History Society, Pierian Sodality 
(he played on the flute), he belonged also to the Institute of 
1770 and to the Knights Punch Bowl. 

1 In King's Chapel, Boston, is a Monument erected " In Memory of the Young 
Men of King's Chapel who died for their Country, 1861-1865," on which are in- 
scribed the names of both Colonel and Doctor Revere. In the Roll of Honor of the 
other Sons of King's Chapel who served in the War for the Union are the names of 
two other '52 men, — Hooper and Quincy. (Cf. Foote, Annals of King's Chapel, ii. 
553-S55> 611-615.) 

155 



Annals of the 

He studied medicine, graduating from the Harvard Medical 
School in 1855, having, meanwhile, passed seven months in 
Europe, and taking another extended tour over the Conti- 
nent and through England in 1857. He never really practised 
his profession, and lived much of his life in Europe. He was 
an enthusiastic member of the Boston Cadets, being Hospital 
Steward in 1868, and always kept up his music, of which he 
was exceedingly fond. An inveterate punster, his delight in 
a good story was perennial, and he was very loyal in his friend- 
ships and attachments. He was a member of the Boston 
Natural History Society, and President of the Massachusetts 
Chess Association, being himself a remarkably fine player. He 
was of a genial, social disposition, fond of ladies' society, and 
gallant in the old-fashioned sense of the word. It was thought 
by some of Dr. Richardson's friends that his uncertain health 
caused him to remain a bachelor from conscientious motives. 

He died of heart disease in Boston on the eighteenth of 
June, 1891. 

EDWIN ALDRICH RODGERS 

Born at Newbury, Vermont, on October twentieth, 1824, 1 
Edwin Aldrich Rodgers was the son of Josiah W. and Lydia 
S. (Aldrich) Rogers, and it may here be noted that his father's 
name was spelled without the "d," which was subsequently 
added by himself. After attending school at the Newbury 
Seminary, he passed his final year of college preparation at 
the Wesleyan Academy. His part at Commencement was 
an Essay on Science in Russia. 

Having studied Law, in 1853, with Judge Underwood at 
Wells River, Vermont, Rodgers was admitted to the Bar and 
started for the West, where he settled at Sonora, Tuolumne 
County, California, and practised his profession, marrying on 
December twenty-fourth, 1864, Harriet G. Merrow of Jamaica 
Plain. 

In 1870 he wrote the Class Secretary that in the interven- 
ing years since leaving college, he had defended nine men for 
murder, none of whom had been hung, and but one sent to the 
State Prison. He had also "dabbled in politics once to the 

1 The Class Book gives the year as 1825; the History of Newbury, Vermont, gives 
it as 1824, which corresponds with his age at the time of his death. 

156 



Harvard Class of 1852 

extent of holding a seat in the California Legislature for which 
I hope to be forgiven," and was at that writing District At- 
torney for Tuolumne County. 

For many years he hoped, as each Commencement Day 
drew near, that he might go East and meet the old Class once 
again, but it was not to be, and with the exception of Richard- 
son, who once visited him in Sonora, he never saw any of his 
Classmates after they separated at graduation. 

Having been in California since 1853 or '54, he was with 
reason regarded as a pioneer, and he was looked up to with 
deserved affection and respect, — even reverence by his fellow 
townsmen. For some time before his death he had been a 
sufferer from the most malignant form of diabetes. In 1890 
the amputation of his left foot brought him temporary relief, 
but in the Spring of 1892 the disease again appeared in his 
right leg; with undaunted courage Rodgers went to San Fran- 
cisco to submit to further amputation as his only chance; he 
never rallied, dying on June twenty-nine, 1892. Mrs. Rodgers 
died on the second of February, 1900. They had no children. 

The following extract from a local paper shows the esteem 
in which he was held in the place of his adoption: 

When he came to this state, he engaged in mining for a time, but 
soon tiring of this occupation he returned to the field of intellectual 
labor, and, on application, was admitted to the bar of Tuolumne 
county in 1854, where he practiced with honor to himself and profit 
to his clients, until he was summoned to that final Court from which 
there is no appeal. With the passing of E. A. Rodgers there disap- 
peared from view one of the most interesting figures of our local his- 
tory. His face and manner were alike uncommon. There was much 
about him to remind you of the old Roman: the cast of head — the 
classic features — the fiery and restive nature — the moral and 
personal daring — the poetical temperament, and uncompromising 
support of the cause he followed. He received his early training at 
Harvard. The grand old college in those days was the home of 
poetry and forensic ability. While Judge Rodgers could not per- 
haps be termed a fine orator, no man was a greater master of the art 
of conversation. His imagination was colored and imbued with the 
light of the shadowy past, and was richly stored with the ideal but 
life-like creations, which the genius of Shakespeare had evoked 
from the realm of fancy. He was a man who would have attracted 
attention anywhere. What he might have been in a broader field, 
with greater opportunities, we can but wonder. . . . 

157 



Annals of the 

There was a touching and affecting pathos in his latter days. 
Though life was agony, his spirit never drooped. His unconquer- 
able will bore him up long after he should have been lying on the 
invalid's couch. But the brave soul was obliged to yield at last. 
He has gone, and lies buried in the beautiful little cemetery to which 
he has followed so many of his earlier companions. Man}* years 
has this little cemetery received the dead into its bosom. Many 
years will it be, ere it receives the last earthly remnant of a nobler 
heart than that heart which beat within the breast of our dear old 
friend E. A. Rodgers. May he rest in peace. 



KNYYET WINTHROP SEARS 

Knyvet Winthrop Sears - was the son of David (H. C. 1807) 
and Miriam Clark Sears, and was born on the ninth of April, 
1832 in Boston in the beautiful old house opposite the Common 
on Beacon Hill, which is now* the home of the Somerset Club. 
He w*as fitted for College, he wrote, by the combined efforts 
of the Latin School and Professor Child, 2 and was a member of 
the Porcellian and Hasty Pudding Clubs. He 

left College shortly before graduating to continue studies in Paris, 
but received his degree with the Class. He was prompted to take 
this step through modesty, fearing lest the Faculty might award 
him the English Oration, and being doubtful of himself as an orator, 

he wrote gaily in the Class Book. 

In Paris, Sears devoted himself to the study of photography 
in the studio of Gustave Legray and continued to alternate 
between Boston and Paris. 

On June tenth, 1858 he married Mary C. Peabody, daughter 
of George Peabody of Salem, and sister of his classmate of 
that name. A typical gentleman of an age now* past, with 
the cultivated tastes of a man of leisure, Mr. Sears was in- 
terested in art, a thorough French scholar, possessed of ready 
wit wdthal, and although reserved, he had many friends. He 
was very fond of horses, and did much for the amelioration 
of V espece chevaline both in France and in his own country. 

1 In 1848, his name was changed by Act of the Legislature from Winthrop Sears 
to Knyvet Winthrop Sears. 

2 Francis James Child, H. C. 1846. 



Harvard Class of 1852 

The description of Mr. Sears here given is from the pen of 
one of his personal friends : 

Under an exterior of reserve and apparent indifference, lay a 
warm heart, a delightful sense of humor and a candid and generous 
spirit. Loyal in his friendships, he was especially steadfast to any- 
one he deemed unfairly treated by others, or in any way misjudged, 
yet with this he was appreciative and just to those opposed to him 
and loath to believe ill of any person. He had a high sense of honor, 
and that rare self-control which is the finishing touch of the gen- 
tleman. He never allowed himself to show anger, and it was simply 
impossible for him to be discourteous. Unfitted by temperament 
and education for practical affairs, his comments on men and measures 
were often keen and discriminating, and no one gave more generous 
applause to those who seemed to him superior in ability or enter- 
prise. 1 

Mr. Sears died at Nahant on the seventeenth of June, 1891, 
leaving a widow and one daughter, Clara Endicott Sears. 
His older daughter Mary Peabody Sears, the wife of Francis 
Shaw (H. C. 1875), died in 1890. 



NATHANIEL DEVEREUX SILSBEE 

" Cras ingens iter abimus cequor 

Animea Cortesi Mantovana 

Sailed for Calcutta three days subsequently, which accounts 
for above quotation," begins Silsbee's autobiography. He 
was the son of the Hon. Nathaniel (H. C. 1824) and Marianne 
Cabot (Devereux) Silsbee and was born in Salem on the 
twenty-second of October, 1830. 

Studied engineering for two years without making any apparent 
progress [he continues in his sketch], and having concluded to fit 
for college, he entered by the kind assistance of a friend at the prin- 
cipal examinations. We do not hear of his gaining any College honors 
during the four years of repose which he enjoyed on the breast of 
Alma Mater, the ungrateful huzzy! 

The four years were, however, undoubtedly productive of 
pleasure, for Silsbee belonged to the Natural History Society, 
the Porcellian Club, and the Institute of 1770, and having, 

1 Sears Genealogy by Samuel P. May. 

159 



Annals of the 

as he says, sailed for Calcutta three days before Class Day, 
passed the remainder of 1852 and 1853 in the East Indies, in 
the establishing of brokerage business. On returning he read 
Law in the office of Perry and Endicott of Salem, but he re- 
nounced the idea of practice in favor of a mercantile life, and 
having moved to Boston, pursued for thirty years a brokerage 
business with the East, forming various partnerships while 
so doing. 

On October twenty-second, 1856, he was married at Salem 
to Mary S. Hodges, daughter of George A. Hodges, Esquire, 
and a letter from Upham to Joe Choate, written from Paris, 
tells of George Lee's 1 going home to officiate as "groomsman 
for Nat Silsbee." 

Mr. Silsbee joined the Salem Light Infantry in 1848, be- 
coming Captain of the Company some years later; a most 
enthusiastic officer, he managed to turn out at parade the 
largest number of men which had been seen for years, and on 
his removal to Boston, he joined the First Corps of Cadets. 
He was a great sufferer from asthma, and for more than forty 
years before his death, he was obliged to sleep at night propped 
in a sitting posture in a chair. 

Mr. Silsbee was interested in the Texas Lumber Company, 
and with two others built eighty-five miles of railway in the 
State, the town of Silsbee, Harden County, Texas, having 
been named in his honour. He was assistant treasurer and 
assistant manager of the Gulf, Beaumont and Kansas City Rail- 
way Company, his classmate Thorndike being at the same time 
President. 

He died on the twenty-seventh of June, 191 2, at his house 
on Monadnock Street, Dorchester, where he was the neighbor 
of his classmate Stedman. 

Mrs. Silsbee survived him, with four children: Elizabeth 
White, born 27 September, 1857, the wife of Winslow Lewis 
Montgomery; Nathaniel, born 9 February, 1859; Rosamond 
Devereux, born 16 November, 1863, and George Devereux, 
born 30 December, 1865. 

Mr. Silsbee, for sixteen years, served in the Boston Cadets, 
of which he had been for many years the oldest member, and 
he was a member of the Salem East India Marine Society. 

1 George Cabot Lee, H. C. 1850. 
l6o 



PLATE XI II 








SOH I ER 
STEDMAN 



SPRAGUE 



SPENCER 
STICKN EY 



Harvard Class of 1852 

GEORGE BRIMMER SOHIER 

Sohier was born in Boston on the nineteenth of November, 
1832, the son of William Davies (H. C. 1805) and Elizabeth 
A. (Dexter) Sohier, and was fitted for College by William 
Hathorne Brooks (H. C. 1827). "How Mr. Brooks managed 
to prepare me must always remain a mystery, for he never 
made any of his pupils study unless they chose, and it is use- 
less to say that they never did choose," Sohier wrote. He was 
admitted with two conditions, and having been out nearly 
all winter with inflammation of the eyes, the result of rheu- 
matic iritis, the Faculty refused to re-instate him, but after 
studying for two months with a private tutor, he was allowed 
to rejoin his Class. The trouble with his eyes returning, he 
was obliged to pass two months in Georgia. 

My college life has been very agreeable, decidedly indolent, and it is 
by no means pleasant to consider that "in a moment, in the twink- 
ling of an eye," as Dr. Francis hath it, the gray-haired Senior will 
be no more, and that another will reign in his stead. 

Wherefrom we may deduce that at the age of twenty, Sohier's 
hair was already white, "though not from years." 

At College he was a member of the Hasty Pudding and 
Porcellian Clubs. In 1854 he entered the law office of Charles 
Greeley Loring (H. C. 181 2) of Boston, but the fearful trouble 
with his eyes, and constant suffering caused by chronic rheu- 
matism, which would have wrecked the life of less brave a 
man, prevented his ever following any profession, and in 1856 
he sailed for France, after a year of travel settling for two 
years in Paris. Unable to endure the New England climate 
in winter, he thereafter made Paris his headquarters, coming 
home every year or so for the summer months. He died on 
the eighteenth of January, 1877, at Paris, and was brought 
home for burial, his funeral taking place from Saint Paul's 
Church (now Cathedral) on February thirteenth. 

The story of his courageous struggle with disease and 
suffering has been told by one well qualified to judge, — his 
schoolmate, classmate and friend, Quincy. 

"In Paris, 18th inst. 44." These few words in that familiar 
column which stands ready to receive all our names in turn, will be 
of interest to a comparatively small circle, but by those who had 

161 



Annals of the 

the privilege of an intimate acquaintance with their subject, will be 
read with the liveliest regret and consciousness of a loss not easily 
to be supplied. Had not his whole life since the attainment of man- 
hood been one constant battle with infirmity and disease m which 
his patient endurance and indomitable pluck challenged the sin- 
cerest admiration, it is safe to assume that George Brimmer Sohier 
might have been as distinguished, and his name as widely known in 
the legal profession as have been those of others of his family. But 
early in the first quarter of the race-course of life, as our friend the 
Autocrat describes it, upon which the graduates of 1852 made such 
a hopeful start together a quarter of a century ago, it became evi- 
dent that Sohier was far too heavily weighted to hope to keep his 
place at the front. But though stricken down by one infirmity after 
another, and convinced above all that what are generally considered 
the prizes of life were not for him, he yet gave an example of the 
spirit with which suffering and disappointment should be borne and 
encountered which many would do well to lay to heart. He deter- 
mined that his faculties should not rust, nor should either reading or 
study or the growth of mind be arrested by obstacles which many 
would have considered insuperable. For many years incapacitated 
from the use of eyes or pen, the energy, industry and success with 
which he availed himself of others was simply wonderful His 
constant cheerfulness, well-stored mind, unfailing and genial humor 
and lively interest and information upon all the topics of the day 
made him to the writer at least the most delightful companion even 
in the Cimmerian darkness of that chamber to which attacks of his 
painful malady of the eyes sometimes confined him for weeks , at a 
time. His name means nothing to the world at large, for the dis- 
tinction which his energy and talents might have achieved »» corpore 
sano must remain the mere conjecture of the few who knew him 
well To those few his memory will always be green and his name 
recall most precious associations. (Boston Daily Advertiser of 23 
January, 1877.) 

ALMON SPENCER 

TWtnard and Amy (Cannon) Spencer, of Puritan lineage, 
^vedTn l8 o n 4 to Postage County, Ohio, and there, at the town 
S Aurora, their son Almon was born on Sunday evening, Sep- 
tember twenty-first, 1828. Brought up as a farmer's boy, amid 
thTcountry pleasures of fishing and hunting he prepared for 
Collet at the Institution of the Rev. Samuel Bissell of Twms- 
bu g Oh o, and after three years and a half at the Western 
Reserve College, entered Harvard in the second term of the 

162 



Harvard Class of 1852 

Senior year, in 1852. He was a member of the Hudson Chap- 
ter of the Alpha Delta Phi. 1 

He began immediately to teach, and pursued his calling for 
a year at Cumberland, Maryland, for two years at Providence, 2 
Alabama, and at Minden, Louisiana, from 1855 to i860. On 
July twentieth of that year he married Jane Hoge Nail, daugh- 
ter of Rev. Robert Nail, D.D. and Mira Elizabeth Woods (Hoge) 
Nail; she was born 6 October, 1833, at Marion, Alabama. 

The young couple settled at Talladega, Alabama, where 
Spencer taught from September, i860 to March, 1862, when 
he entered the Confederate Army as Artillery Sergeant under 
General Bragg and served until the end of the war. The year 
1865 found him again at Talladega, and he continued to teach 
until failing health obliged him to retire, in 1894. He was at 
different times Superintendent of the Reidville High School 
and Female College, and of the Pisgah Seminary near Ver- 
sailles, Kentucky. Thence, in 1886, he wrote to Denny in 
acknowledgment of a package of Class circulars, the first Class 
communication which he had received since he left Harvard 
thirty-four years before. He said in the same note that his life 
had been an uneventful one, — the results of his labors being 
recorded in the lives of many. 

He died on the eleventh of July, 1895, at Clinton, South 
Carolina, having been stricken with apoplexy while sitting at 
table. 3 

His widow survived him; they had four children, Robert 
Brainard, born 10 May, 1861, died 21 April, 1863; Anna 
Caroline, born 26 October, 1862, unmarried, a teacher; Almon 
Edwin, born 14 December, 1867, graduated Central University, 
Richmond, Kentucky, 1888, and in 1895, Professor of Greek at 
Presbyterian College, Clinton, South Carolina; and Elizabeth 
Nail Spencer, born 13 May, 1875. 

His lifelong friend and Classmate Fay notified Denny of his 
death: "A noble Christian man has gone," he wrote; and in the 

1 The list of the Seminaries at which he taught is given as follows in the Catalogue 
of the Hudson Chapter of the Alpha Delta Phi: "Teacher, Minden, La. to 1857; 
Talladega, Ala. Female College, 1857-1861; Pisgah, Ky. 1867-1875; Columbus, Ga. 
Female College, 1875-1877; Pisgah, Ky. 1877-1886; Winchester, Ky. 1886-1889; 
Reidville, S. C, Female College, 1889-1894." These dates do not all agree with state- 
ments in the text, which, with other facts, are taken from a letter to Denny written in 
January, 1897 by Spencer's son, Almon Edwin Spencer. 

2 A post-village in Pickens County. 

3 Harvard Graduates Magazine for March, 1896, iv. 479. 

163 



Annals of the 

letter of condolence which the Class deputed him to send to 
Mrs. Spencer, Fay thus refers to especial characteristics of his 
friend : 

I cheerfully, but sadly, accept the appointment, and hereby express, 
in the name of the Class of '52, our appreciation of his manly, Chris- 
tian character; his modest, quiet and gentlemanly deportment at all 
times and under all circumstances; his finely consistent pursuit of 
what he considered duty, not counting the cost when he felt he was 
right. This it was that made him so brave a soldier on the Confeder- 
ate battlefield. His devotion to duty endeared him to all his Class- 
mates. 

An obituary notice of Mr. Spencer mentions his having 
graduated from Harvard and adds, "as might have been 
expected [he] was very careful and scholarly in his literary 
habits." 



JOSEPH WHITE SPRAGUE 

Joseph White Sprague, the son of Joseph E 1 (H. C. 1804) 
and Sarah L. (Bailey) Sprague, was born in Salem on the 
eighteenth of January, 183 1. 

At College he was a member of the Odd Fellows and the 
Harvard Natural History Society, likewise of the Institute of 
1770, and took part at Commencement, delivering an Essay 
on the Scientific Character of Pliny. 

Having finished his College course, he established himself at 
the Cambridge Nautical Almanac Office, at the same time 
studying at the Lawrence Scientific School. From 1854 to 
1862 he was employed as an engineer on the Erie Canal, his 
headquarters being situated at the Rochester end; and he was 
also engaged in work on the Canal through the Dismal Swamp, 
Virginia. 

The construction of a bridge at Dubuque, Iowa, had caused 
the Government no little trouble. The river men opposed it 
bitterly on the ground that the river would be unnavigable if 
the specifications which had been drawn up were carried out. 
The railway promoters feared that the objections of the river 
men would be insuperable, and at this juncture Mr. Sprague 

1 Son of Dr. William Stearns, his name having been changed from Joseph Sprague 
Stearns to Joseph Sprague in 1801, and again changed, in 1809, to Joseph E Sprague. 

164 



Harvard Class of 1852 

was detailed to settle the vexed question. Rejecting the plans 
already under discussion, he substituted others of his own, his 
work proving so entirely satisfactory that the Ohio Falls Car 
Company immediately made him an advantageous offer, and 
he accepted the charge of the plant at Jeffersonville, Indiana. 
Just as the success of the Company seemed finally assured, 
the works were burned, but after weathering many storms, 
including the Black Friday panic of 1868, and satisfactorily 
settling a quarrel betwixt the Car Company and the Chesa- 
peake and Ohio Railway over disputed property, Sprague, in 
1872, built the finest car works in the world on the original site. 

In 1876, the Car Company failed, but nothing daunted, he 
re-organized the Company on a smaller basis, himself paying 
all the indebtedness to individuals. The Company prospered 
amazingly for the next eight years, and although a business 
depression caused stoppage of the works for a period, their 
continued success enabled Sprague to sell out his interest in 
1888, and retire permanently from active life. In the December 
of that year he embarked on a voyage to Cuba, Yucatan and 
Mexico; in April, 1889, he sailed for Europe, intending to 
remain away for four years, but a sudden attack of nostalgia 
decided him to return in October. 

While President of the Ohio Car Company his home had 
always been across the river at Louisville, and thither he once 
more repaired, and established himself at housekeeping in a 
home which he wrote his friend Oliver was "very uniquely 
furnished with articles secured in the Orient." His niece Mrs. 
Terry acted as his chatelaine until the failure of her health 
obliged her to seek a Southern climate, when Mr. Sprague 
broke up his home and set forth on an extensive journey 
throughout India, returning by the way of Japan, where he 
gave large orders for elaborate furniture, and visiting Honolulu. 
Meeting Joaquin Miller in the last named city, Sprague wrote 
at his request an account of the Hawaiian Volcanoes which he 
told Oliver would be printed in the New York Independent. 

At the date of the letter referred to, 29 January, 1895, he 
planned to move from Louisville and establish himself at 
Washington, and in pursuit of the furnishings for his home, 
paid another visit to Japan in December, 1896, to superintend 
the filling of the order given eighteen months before, hoping to 
return with his treasures in the following Spring. For the first 

165 



Annals of the 

time in forty-one years, Mr. Sprague attended the Class Dinner 
in June, 1895, but although rarely meeting his Classmates, he 
retained his interest in them and always kept up a desultory 
correspondence with his schoolfellow and classmate Oliver. 
During all the last years of his life he continued to be one of 
"the band of tramps" as he called mundivagants like himself, 
dying suddenly at Vallombrosa, Italy, on the twenty-second of 
May, 1900. 

Never having married, his outlet of natural affection found 
expression in his fondness for young girls, to whom he was a 
perfect "squire of dames," and during the years of his life in 
Louisville he was never so happy as when devising parties and 
entertainments for their pleasure. 

Dr. Oliver, whose lifelong friendship well qualified him to 
speak, thus writes of Mr. Sprague in the letter which the 
Class of 1852 deputed him to send to his nephew Mr. Terry: 

Such a life as that of your uncle needs little eulogium: it speaks its 
own praise. His fine talents, his artistic tastes, his deep and abiding 
sense of right, and his intense devotion to life's duties were united to 
an amiable disposition very rare in a person of his force of character. 
It is certain that all who enjoyed his friendship, and even those whose 
association with him was less intimate, will be unable to recall his 
benign countenance without bringing into vivid mental view the 
unusual combination of qualities belonging to him. Especially were 
his enviable characteristics and talents acknowledged and appreciated 
by his College Classmates, and by not a few of the members of other 
classes of his Cambridge course; while those who had the privilege of 
the closest intimacy with him must feel their loss to be really a per- 
sonal one, and not far removed from that of his immediate family. 

My own intimate association with our late Classmate, from early 
boyhood, enables me to say that such a feeling is abundantly justified, 
and that his life may truly be pointed to as above reproach, from what- 
ever side it is regarded. 

In his will, made in 1899, Sprague created a trust for the 
benefit of certain relatives; on their demise, the sum of two 
hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars was to be paid over 
to the United States to be held as a portion of the funds of the 
Smithsonian Institution, to be known as the "Sprague Fund" 
and to be used for the promotion of the Physical Sciences. 



166 



Harvard Class of 1852 



CHARLES ELLERY STEDMAN 

"Pray you, go, Master Page." 

Shakspere. 

The interesting subject of this sketch was born 23 March, 1831 in 
the once lovely village of Chelsea, ■ — of Poor but Respectable parents, 
viz: — Charles Harrison Stedman, M.D. and Lucy Rust, daughter of 
William Ingalls, 1 M.D. of Boston. 

He remembers attending in Chelsea his first school, the mistress 
of which was governess in a neighboring family. The number of 
scholars was three, including himself, and memory does not give 
a favorable idea of the discipline of the establishment, as one of 
the small boys, invested with cowhide boots, had the habit of 
stamping on the governess's feet when displeased with her mode of 
instruction. 

In 1841, the family moved into Boston and the subject of our 
remarks entered Mr. Thayer's school, where he remained two years, 
and then was drafted to the Latin School under the superintendence 
of the great Dixwell, where he fitted for college. His impression is 
that he must have been a very unpleasant youth at school, as he used 
to weep profusely at every untoward occurrence, and to tease his 
immediate neighbors to the last degree of distraction, as his friend 
Norris will testify. 

Although he considers that he has been pre-eminently distinguished 
above his classmates by warnings, deductions, tardiness, parietals and 
privates, yet the years of College life have been as pleasant to him as 
they have been to the most favored of the Class of '52. 

To his gifted friend, and neighbor for the last four years, Mr. 
Sprague, he feels himself deeply indebted for that polished ease and 
those charms of conversation which have sweetened morning prayers 
in the depth of winter and lessened the fatigues of recitation in the 
sultry dog-days. May his shadow never wax less. 

Understanding that Mr. Stickney intends to occupy a large number 
of pages with an exciting delineation of the most interesting scenes 
of his valuable life, the writer now takes leave of the Class Book, and 
wishes success and calmness to those who haven't yet acceded to the 
behest of our ferocious and exorbitant Secretary. 

The foregoing autobiographical sketch by Stedman in the 
Class Book gives an idea of the ever-abiding sense of humor 
which made the sight of himself, or a word or sketch from his 
pen, a perennial source of delight. 

1 H. C. 1790. 
167 



Annals of the 

It is needless to say that he was very popular in college; he 
was a member of the Odd Fellows and of the Natural History 
Society and the Knights Punch Bowl, Vice-President of the 
Hasty Pudding Club, and one of the Institute of 1770, taking 
part in the Exhibition of May, 1 851, and delivering a Dis- 
quisition at Commencement on Anna Comnena. 

As might be expected in the case of a youth with two .ZEscu- 
lapian grandparents, Stedman was destined for the medical 
profession, and graduated at the Commencement of the 
Harvard Medical School in 1855, being thereby entitled to 
membership in the Massachusetts Medical Society, and 
reporting, in the Class Book, that he "read his Thesis! ! ! !" 
That ordeal safely over, he set up an office in Montgomery 
Place, Boston, but at the end of a year he moved to Dorches- 
ter, and on November first, 1859, was married to Edith Ellen, 
daughter of the late Isaac Parker of Boston. 

In a letter to Williamson, written while he was House 
Surgeon at the Massachusetts General Hospital in 1854, 
Stedman the heart-free gave utterance to many witticisms at 
the expense of the early Class victims of Hymen, and his own 
downfall was therefore amazingly satisfactory to the bachelors 
of the K. P. B., Head, as scribe, insisting in his record that 
Stedman addressed him as "Edith" all the time on their way 
home from one of the Club's revels, and by another member 
he was accused of directing him to Parker's Hill instead of to 
his new abode at "Meeting-House Hill." 

In the September of 1862, Stedman volunteered, and having 
received his commission as Assistant Surgeon in the Navy in 
the following January, was ordered to the United States Gun- 
boat "Huron." From Stono River, in June, he wrote home 
to the Class Supper Committee saying that he shall compel 
the other officers to join him in drinking to the health of all 
of the members of '52 at the Supper from which he must be 
absent. 

You can tell a Harvard man if he is nearly swallowed up in boots, 
grimed with dirt, or done in blue and gold like Ticknor's edition of 
Tennyson, or smoking a pipe on a lee-cathead, the Harvard College 
will stick right out of him, 

he writes, and the epistle concludes with one of his inimitable 
sketches of himself standing by the wheel, pipe in mouth and 

168 



Harvard Class of 1852 

"bearded like a pard," absorbed in a pamphlet marked " 1852." 
Transferred to the N ah ant at Port Royal a year later, he 
missed another Class Supper, refusing the request for a photo- 
graph on the score that his pictures resembled him too strongly, 
not "to render their addition to a gallery of portraits of gentle- 
men an eyesore to the public." 

Having resigned, in April, 1865, Dr. Stedman was once more 
free to devote himself to his profession and to his family, already 
augmented by the birth of his son Ellery in 1862, on the eighth 
of May. In 1871, he was appointed one of the visiting surgeons 
at the City Hospital, resigning in 1875. 

He belonged to an order which has now almost passed away, 
— that of general practitioner and family physician, which with 
a man like him means that he was friend, confidant and 
counsellor in many households, physician to mind as well as 
body, a role which he filled with infinite wisdom and kindness. 
His practice was chiefly, of course, in Dorchester, but he was 
often called in consultation. 

He was a member of all the leading Medical Societies, and 
Secretary of the Dorchester Medical Club, whose archives 
contain a volume of sketches of "medical life and character" 
from his pencil which we can well believe to be unexcelled, for 
in addition to his keen, but always kindly, wit and humor, 
Stedman possessed uncommon talent as a draughtsman, in a 
style which suggests Leech's work. His letters to his intimates 
often concluded with a sketch of his own physiognomy, instead 
of his name, — the reply to a Class Dinner notice ending with a 
representation of himself supported by a lamp-post, all drawn 
with but few strokes of the pen, with inimitable spirit, and the 
one last mentioned the more amusing in that Stedman was no 
friend to over-indulgence, and suggested that the address of 
one of the Class who "got frankly drunk" at supper should be 
mislaid before the next year. 

He had also a gift for rhyme, and the lines from the K. P. B. 
records which he wrote on the death of Norris, show his sweet 
and tender strain: 

But soft! a thought to him, I pray, — 
Seeking in Southern clime to stay 
The blight which Northern blasts had brought — 
Whose latest sigh those South gales caught. 
169 



Annals of the 

How oft, when silent, lone and still 
Our mem'ries wandering where they will, - 
We sit and muse on friends of yore, 
On days gone by, on pleasures o'er — 

His form stands forth to Friendship's eye, 
While deeply heaves the heartfelt sigh; 
Once more we clasp his gen'rous hand, 
Once more he hails our trusty band. 

We wake to know he sleeps in death — 
We wake to wish his last, lone breath 
Had fanned our cheek, that our hand 
Had smoothed his bed in that far land. 

But hush! all murmurings dispel 

For He who doeth all things well 

May have withdrawn each earthly charm, 

That on the Everlasting Arm 

He might more calmly lay his head, 
Might part with earth with less of dread — 
With firmer hope his spirit give 
To Him who died that we might live. 



and in lighter vein: 



Lads of the K. P. B. 

Whom we dare dub men, 
Don't you hear Calvin say 

"Summon the Clubmen?" 
Come away, come away 

Don't wait for urging — 
Come in your best array, 

Lawyer and surgeon. 

Come from close courtrooms — 

Come from the fracture, 
Don't you see how the port blooms? 

Time 't is you'd smacked your 
Lips o'er the Hock and the sherry. 

Drop the writ and the lancet, 
Now then, be merry 

And let your hearts dance yet. 

170 



Harvard Class of 1852 

Come from foul Broad street 

Come from sweet nigger-hill 
From Paddy with scored feet 

And darkey with bigger ill 
Leave the poor debtor 

To breathe for a minute 
And let the abettor 

Get deeper still in it. 

Come as the cows come when 

The sun has descended; 
Come as the duns come when 

Old year has ended. 
Faster still — Faster still 

Now then, on hand there! 
Frank — Rich — Bob and Bill 

And the Commander! 

Fast they come — Fast they come. 

See how they muster! 
Loud ring the glasses round 

The knights as they cluster. 
Loose your vests — draw your blades 

How sharp is each man set. 
Hurrah! boys — for Punch Bowl 

Go in for the onset. 

In February, 1890 he gave a dinner to seven of the "fifty 
toodles" (as he loved to call his Classmates), the forerunner of 
the Class Dining Club which met monthly at the houses of 
eight 1 for twelve or thirteen years. 

In the summer of 1895 he accompanied his son on a trip 
to Europe and in the same year delivered an address before 
the New York Medical Society. 

The neighborhood of Dorchester having greatly changed, 
Dr. Stedman moved to Boston in 1901 and gradually withdrew 
from practice. Retaining to the end of his life his spirit of 
witty and kindly cheer, which with his genius for friendship 
and real tenderness of feeling, made him an ideal companion, 
he died after a brief illness at the house of his daughter 
in Brookline on May twenty-fourth, 1905. Mrs. Stedman 
died some years before her husband. They had three chil- 

1 For a brief account of the Club, see p. 401, post. 
171 



Annals of the 

dren, Ellery, Alice and Edith, the wife of Gorham Dana of 
Brookline. 

Dr. Stedman was a member of the Loyal Legion, the St. 
Botolph Club, the Massachusetts Medical Society, the Dor- 
chester Medical Club, the Obstetrical Society, the Boston 
Society for Medical Observation and the Boston Society for 
Medical Improvement. On the occasion of his seventieth 
birthday he was presented with silver loving cups by the 
Boston and Dorchester Medical Societies. 



AUSTIN STICKNEY 

Born in Boston on the twenty-fifth of November, 183 1, Austin 
Stickney was the son of William and Lucy (Burgess) Stickney 
of Grafton, Vermont. He was for two years at the Boston 
Latin School; finishing his preparatory studies at the Roxbury 
Latin School, he entered Harvard with the Freshman Class. 

He was a member of the Pierian Sodality, being Secretary in 
1849-1850, Vice-President in 1850-1, and President in 1851-2. 
He played on the violin. At the May Exhibition of 185 1 he 
gave "An English Version" from Klopstock's Messiah; in 
October, 1857, he delivered a Disquisition on the "Versatility 
of Mozart," and at Commencement a Dissertation on "Reli- 
gious Toleration of the Ancient Romans." 

After graduation he taught school at Taunton and at New- 
port, Rhode Island, and entered the Harvard Law School, but 
ill health obliged him to give up all idea of the legal profession 
and he went South for a time. 

In 1858 he received the appointment of Greek and Latin 
Professor at Trinity College, Hartford, the President, Samuel 
Eliot (H. C. 1839), being a personal friend. He filled the 
position until 1863, and again from 1870 to 1873. 

On July seventh, 1863, Professor Stickney married Harriet 
Champion, daughter of Henry Champion and Sarah Jane 
(Whittlesey) Trumbull, and granddaughter of Governor 
Joseph Trumbull, 1 thus uniting two branches of the house of 
Trumbull, as Professor Stickney was a descendant of Governor 
Jonathan. In the following year the young couple went to 
Europe, the Continent becoming thenceforth almost as much 

1 Hon. Joseph Trumbull, LL.D., son of David and Sarah (Backus) Trumbull, 
Yale College, 1801; Governor of Connecticut, 1849. 

172 



Harvard Class of 1852 

their home as America. Professor Stickney devoted himself 
for many years to the study of Dante, and while in Dresden, 
in 1868, King John of Saxony gave him the freedom of his 
own library containing valuable editions of the great poet, 
a pleasant and congenial friendship springing up between 
the two lovers of the famous Italian. Many winters were 
passed in Italy, varied by a visit to Spain, his friend Lowell 
being then Ambassador at Madrid, and from there, as from 
many other lands, Professor and Mrs. Stickney collected 
treasures of art to beautify their American home. 

Although he declined the Greek Professorship at Columbia 
College, Professor Stickney always retained his love for the 
Classics, finding pleasure in the meetings of the Greek Club of 
New York and publishing, in 1885, the "De Officiis" of Cicero 
with an introductory essay and commentary, which has been a 
popular text-book. He gave much time also to the study of the 
Provencal language and brought out a Provencal poem on the 
four cardinal virtues by Daude de Pradas, with notes. The 
love of music, shown by his selection of subjects for exhibition 
parts in his college days, remained with him, and he never 
abandoned his violin, wielding the bow with an exquisite deli- 
cacy of touch which made his playing a delight to his hearers. 

In 1888 Professor Stickney was sent as delegate of Trinity 
College at the eight hundredth anniversary of the University 
of Bologna, an agreeable mission which he filled in company 
with James Russell Lowell and Henry James of Harvard. 

Stickney was endowed with great charm of personality, 
which, blended with his brilliant intellect, scholarly mind and 
that truest "courtesy which cometh from the heart," bore 
constant witness to the truth of old Young's words, "A Chris- 
tian is the highest style of man," for those who were privileged 
to know him best realized that the very foundation of his being 
was the deep religious faith which underlay his every thought 
and act. 

Professor Stickney's last years were passed in Paris and there, 
on the thirtieth of November, 1896, he died. Mrs. Stickney 
died on the eighteenth of February, 191 5. 

Their four children were Lucy Madeline, born 18 July, 1866, 
at St. Germain, now Mrs. W. W. Mathewson; Eliza Trum- 
bull, born 13 October, 1868, at Dresden; Joseph Trumbull, born 
20 June, 1874, in Geneva, Switzerland (H. C. 1895, Sorbonne, 

173 



Annals of the 

Paris, 1903), inheriting the tastes and ability of his father, he 
published in the latter year a volume of poems entitled 
"Dramatic. Verses," and was Instructor in Greek at Harvard 
from that year until, his death in 1904; and Henry Austin 
Stickney, born 13 May, 1879 (H. C. 1900, LL.B. Columbia 
1903), now a lawyer in New York. 

ELIJAH SWIFT 

Upon the nineteenth of November, 183 1, the subject of these 
remarks first gave auricular demonstration of his existence, and com- 
menced a life, which, to himself, has been one of peculiar interest. 
And of this life, unmarked by those events which are calculated to 
amuse or instruct others, he is requested to write a history. Mindful 
of the maxim of his classical brother, "Ex nihilo, nihil fit ," he submits 
to the imperative command of his Classmates. 

Oliver C. Swift and Eliza Robinson Jenkins, my parents, are 
natives of Falmouth, Massachusetts, which has nourished our family 
since "the good old Colony times." . . . 

The first peculiarity which marked my career was an unaccountable 
fondness for sleep. At morning, noon or night my appetite for this 
aliment was equally uncloyed. This fact, together with abstinence 
from concealed weapons may perhaps account for a certain sleepiness 
during Dudleian Lectures. 

Having passed through this sleepy boyhood and being installed 
in an Infant School, tradition says that Master Elijah was placed 
beneath the table as a punishment for biting the girls. He would 
however beg his Classmates to wholly discredit this reflection upon 
his gallantry, since numerous historical facts of later date fully retrieve 
his character. 

From the foregoing autobiographical sketch we can glean 
an idea of Air. Swift's pleasant humor. Having attended Fal- 
mouth Academy, he passed the two years previous to entering 
Harvard at Phillips Academy, Andover. 

At College he belonged to the Harvard Natural History 
Society and to the Institute of 1770; at Commencement he 
delivered a Disquisition on "Roman Hereditary Vices and 
Virtues," and soon after leaving College, he traveled for a 
twelve-month in Europe, returning to enter the importing 
business in Boston. At the end of a year or two he went South 
to furnish live oak for the Navy, and on the outbreak of the 
War he volunteered, becoming private in the Thirty-Eighth 

174 



PLATE XIV 






SWI FT 
THOMAS 



THAYER 



THAXTER 



THORN DIKE 



Harvard Class of 1852 

Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers on the thirteenth of 
August, 1862, and being appointed First Lieutenant and 
Quartermaster two months later. He was slightly wounded 
and taken prisoner in 1863, and remained in active service until 
the end of the War. 

In 1869 Swift married Myra Bliss, daughter of Jeremiah 
Evans and Laura Bliss; they had three children; Eliza Robin- 
son, born 10 July, 1870, Oliver Franklin, born 21 November, 
1874, who died in 1882, and Elijah Kent, born 10 December, 
1878. 

Mr. Swift settled in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, where his busi- 
ness consisted in the buying and selling of lumber. "Always a 
student," his daughter writes that — 

even in his busiest years, he found time for much reading of History. 
He always kept his interest, too, in the Classics, and would repeat 
hundreds of lines from Virgil, the Iliad and Odyssey and the Greek 
Comedies and Tragedies, and many of the Odes of Horace. 

He knew also some German, and a great deal of French and English 
poetry. Tedious journeys were often made a delight by his reciting 
almost for hours favorite poems or parts of plays. 

Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Byron, Tennyson, Longfellow, Bryant 
and O. W. Holmes were his favorites as I remember. 

Father was very devout, and an earnest student of Biblical history. 
From this he came to have a great interest in archaeology, particu- 
larly Egyptian archaeology. Everything published on the subject 
that could be obtained, he had, and he followed with the greatest 
interest the work in Egypt of Flinders Petrie and others. 

In character my father was absolutely upright, in temperament 
reserved and retiring, optimistic and cheerful. Although public 
spirited, he avoided public office, yet served on many Boards of 
charities and educational institutions, and gave freely of his time and 
money to both. 

He spoke seldom in public, but always when he did, he carefully 
prepared what he had to say, taking great pleasure in the arrange- 
ment of his subject-matter, and a discriminating choice of words to 
express his ideas. 

Almost every summer he came back to his home in Falmouth for 
a time. 

Three years before his death, he returned to the old home- 
stead where four generations of his race had lived and died, 
there to pass his last years among the scenes of his boyhood. 
He died at his home on the seventeenth of July, 1907. 

175 



Annals of the 

His first wife died on the twenty-seventh of February, 1881, 
and he married on the eleventh of September, 1889, Fannie 
Wetherbee, daughter of Francis and Cornelia Wetherbee, who 
survived him, with the two children already mentioned, Eliza, 
wife of Dr. Arthur Lambert Chute (H. C. m 1895) of Boston, 
and Elijah Kent Swift of Whitinsville, Massachusetts. 

Mr. Swift was a corporate member of the American Board 
of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, a Trustee of Beloit 
College, and a member of the B. F. Jones Post, G. A. R., at 
Falmouth. 

ADAM WALLACE THAXTER 

A. Wallace Thaxter, as he was always called, was the son 
of Adam W. and Charlotte (Goff) Thaxter, and was born in 
Boston on the sixteenth of January, 1832. 

At College he was a prominent member of the Iadma, before 
which he delivered a poem, which was "printed by request." 1 
He was the Odist for the Class Supper at graduation, and 
contributed an ode also to the Class Supper of 1855 and to the 
Decennial celebration. He received the Second Boylston 
Prize for Elocution in 185 1. 

After graduating, he entered the Harvard Law School, but 
his bent was wholly literary, and giving up all thought of 
the Bar after one term, he devoted himself to writing. Al- 
ways enthusiastically interested in everything pertaining to 
the Stage, he became a dramatic critic, his occupation of 
course bringing him into close contact with actors, and he 
was widely known by that genial and improvident race, to 
whom he showed untiring kindness. As a pastime he him- 
self wrote numerous, plays, several of which, especially his 
musical comedies, were acted with success. His work as 
a dramatic critic led to his connection with the Saturday 
Evening Gazette of which he was assistant editor for more 
than ten years, resigning only when his failing health obliged 
him to do so. He continued to contribute to his favorite 
column until within a week of his death. As a rhymer Mr. 
Thaxter showed great ease and grace. His College Odes are 
published with the accounts of the Class meetings, but some 
idea of his graceful touch may be formed from the following 

1 See page 370 et seq., post. 
I76 



Harvard Class of 1852 

stanzas, written only four days before his death, to a lady 
who had sent him flowers. 

Lady, I cannot thank you in set phrase 

For your choice gift of flowers; 
Throughout the watches of succeeding days, 

And of night's lingering hours, 
A memory of your kindness still will steal 
Upon a heart that has not ceased to feel. 

Mr. Thaxter was a strong Democrat, signing himself in a 
letter to Denny, "Yours sincerely and McClellanly." 

He dearly loved his College associations and his Classmates, 
one of his most intimate friends among them being Bradlee, 
whose loving description of his character is his best epitaph: 

I should like very much to be present [at the Class Supper of 1864] 
to speak a word for Thaxter. His affection for his class was very 
strong up to the very last moments of his life, and he always seemed 
to feel a just pride in the success of the Class of '52. His sickness 
was met with a beautiful patience and his death welcomed without 
a shudder. He fell asleep like a babe in its mother's arms, so gently 
that those looking on were not aware of the moment of his departure. 

In life he was a man so modest that only those who knew him 
well could appreciate his worth, but underneath all his reserve there 
was considerable talent and power, and, as I discovered in his last 
days, quite a religious fervor and strength. 

As a giver, I am told he was very profuse, never liking to say nay 
to any that asked him for help. He was a great friend to artists, 
and some of his most sincere mourners are those whom he has en- 
couraged by his friendly criticism, and cordial fellowship. 

His earthly pilgrimage was full of trial, and his lot much more 
severe than the most of us have to bear, yet you never heard him 
complain, and not till the delirium of his disease, a few days previous 
to his death, unloosed his self-command, was the agony that was 
eating his life out, made sadly plain. 

Peace be to his ashes; may his memory ever be faithfully cherished 
by the Class of '52. 

Thaxter was another of the Class victims to pay toll to 
phthisis. He died in Boston on the seventh of June, 1864, 
leaving a widow. He was married in 1857 to Miss Mary E. 
Hill of Saint Louis, both his marriage and his funeral services 
being performed by Bradlee. He had no children. 

177 



Annals of the 

JAMES BRADLEY THAYER 

Many were the New England lads, during the first six decades 
of the nineteenth century, who found no labor too hard, no 
sacrifice too great, which led to the achievement of a Harvard 
education. Among these youths of noble aim and aspiration 
was James Bradley Thayer. 

"I was born in Haverhill, Massachusetts, January fifteenth, 
183 1," he begins his record in the Class Book. His father, 
Abijah Wyman Thayer, was at that time the editor of a Whig 
newspaper; his mother's maiden name was Susan Bradley. 
Thayer's birth was literally "announced by all the trumpets 
of the sky," for he arrived in the midst of a tremendous snow- 
storm while the nine o'clock bell was ringing. 

At the age of ten months he narrowly escaped cremation, for 
he tells us that he was "sitting tied in his chair before an open 
fireplace, with an unusually hot fire, playing with a ball 
(probably chewing it) and no one else in the room, when the 
ball dropped from hand or mouth and rolled into the fireplace." 
In trying to follow it, the little fellow pitched over onto the 
hearth, where he lay with his head exposed to the fire, "his skull 
at once following the fate of an apple and beginning to roast"; 
when finally rescued by his mother, it was so severely burned 
that it was feared that he would be an idiot, and he says that 
the hair was "permanently gone over a large district on the 
left side of his head." "Several square inches therefore were 
left permanently bald, as is the case of the proud bird which 
symbolizes the freedom and power of my country." 

The ardent temperance advocacy of Thayer's father render- 
ing him unpopular, he sold out his paper, in 1835, and moved 
to Philadelphia; meeting with no success there, in 1840 he 
betook himself with his family to Amherst, Massachusetts, 
and after failing in an attempt to raise silk, the whole house- 
hold was transferred, in 185 1, to Northampton, where Mr. 
Thayer at one time ran a private Post Office in opposition to 
the Government Office. Although successful in that venture, 
he was unfortunate in other ways, and James and his brother 
were sent out as chore-boys, doing chores for their board and 
going at times to school. 

In October, 1845, James accepted the offer of a Northampton 
physician, then moving to Pawtucket, Rhode Island, to serve in 

178 



Harvard Class of 1852 

his office, receiving in return his board and an opportunity to 
study medicine, and during the eight months he passed there, 
mixing medicines, collecting bills and sleeping in the apothe- 
cary shop, he "experienced religion," becoming, as he says, "an 
ardent Baptist, and much more a Baptist than a Christian." 
While at home in the summer of 1846 there was a great Revival 
in Northampton, to which all succumbed with the exception of 
his brother Bill and Chauncey Wright, who were, of course, 
consequently regarded as fit food for the flames. James was 
converted to "baptism by aspersion," and his friends at Paw- 
tucket were so impressed with his sanctity that on his return 
they offered to fit him out as a colporteur through the Western 
States, a calling which he says he persuaded himself he wished 
to pursue. An epidemic of fever intervened, which attacked 
all the Thayer family, and as James became a Unitarian during 
his convalescence, his traveling missionary plans came to a 
premature end, his Baptist friends having no use for an apostle 
of his recently acquired faith. His brother meanwhile was 
preparing for college, and seized with a desire to do the same, 
James, though still retaining an appetite for religious tracts, 
began to study the Greek Reader and Grammar while working 
in a local jewelry store, until the departure of his brother, in 
1847, sent him home to live. James's first idea was to enter 
Amherst College, but Mrs. Lyman 1 of Northampton advised 
him to go to Harvard, and promising that the funds should 
be provided, he followed her counsel and entered Harvard 
with the Freshman Class of 1848. With her help, and after 
teaching, during the Sophomore year, in the family of John 
Murray Forbes of Milton, aided by him likewise, he passed 
brilliantly through his college course, graduating with the rank 
of ninth scholar, and delivering at Commencement a Disserta- 
tion on "The First Greek Philosopher." He took part also in 
the Exhibitions of October, 1850, and May, 185 1, and was, of 
course, in the Phi Beta Kappa. During his college days he was 
a member of the Alpha Delta Phi, Natural History Society, 
and Orator and KporaSeiXos of the Hasty Pudding Club, as well 
as a member of the Institute of 1770, while his Classmates' 
estimate of him may be gauged by their selection of him for 
Class Orator. 

1 See Recollections of My Mother by Mrs. Susan I. Lesley, pp. 454, 455, 471, 
472. 

179 



Annals of the 

College over, Thayer taught school in Milton at a salary of 
$800 a year, and was for two years at the Law School, receiv- 
ing while there the first prize for an Essay on "The Law of 
Eminent Domain." He had chosen his future profession 
after much deliberation, for his first inclination was toward 
the ministry. He passed six months in the office of Tolman 
Willey, and then set up for himself, in .1857, in partnership 
with William J. Hubbard, the association lasting until Mr. 
Hubbard's death in 1864, when he succeeded him as Master 
in Chancery, holding the office until his resignation in 1874; 
in 1865 he became a member of the firm of Peleg Whitman 
Chandler (Bowdoin 1834) and George Otis Shattuck (H. C. 
1851). 

In 1872 Mr. Thayer declined the offer of a professorship 
in Literature at Harvard, although, despite the popular 
prejudice of the day against any commingling of literary and 
business pursuits, he contributed the sketch on Fisher Ames 
to the "Homes of American Statesmen," in 1854, and wrote 
frequent articles for a small periodical called "Today," in 
which the young men of his time were interested. 

Marrying on April twenty-fourth, 1861, Sophia Ripley, 
daughter of the Reverend Samuel and Sarah (Bradford) 
Ripley of Concord, they made their home at Milton until 1874, 
when, having accepted the Royall Professorship of Law at 
Harvard in the previous year, Thayer found himself constrained 
to live in Cambridge. His so doing was regarded as an absolute 
calamity by his fellow townsmen of Milton. The following 
greeting was written by Thomas William Parsons (H. C. h 1853) 
and was printed in the Boston Daily Advertiser and the Chris- 
tian Register: 

To The New Royall Professor. 

Learn'd in the law who leav'st the busy street 
And studious chambers for the gown and chair, 
Amid the cordial friends that speak thee fair 

And thine accession to the laurel greet 

If one slow scholar in his hushed retreat 
A little longer than the rest forbear, 
'Tis but as minstrels that salute some heir 

Wait for still night to make their flutes more sweet. 

180 



Harvard Class of 1852 

And as in heaven there is more joy o'er one 
Repentant worldling than o'er ninety-nine 
Good men that love the world or make it loved, 

So glad Athena glories in the son 

Who turns in manhood to his boyhood's shrine 
And Harvard welcomes him with hand ungloved. 

Connected for almost thirty years with his Alma Mater, 
Professor Thayer was Royall Professor until 1883, Professor of 
Law till 1893 and Weld Professor until his death. During these 
years he produced the legal works which have given him world- 
wide reputation as a jurist, the best known of which are "The 
Origin and Scope of the American Doctrine of Constitutional 
Law," "Cases in Evidence," "Cases in Constitutional Law," 
"The Development of Trial by Jury" and "A Prelimi- 
nary Treatise on the Common Law." There are many others, 
and in addition to his legal writings he contributed often to 
the Boston Daily Advertiser, and published "The Letters of 
Chauncey Wright," edited and prefaced by himself; "A 
Western Journey with Emerson"; "Memorial Sketches of the 
Reverend Samuel Ripley and of Mrs. Samuel Ripley"; and a 
"Sketch of John Marshall," which appeared in the Riverside 
Biographical Series in 1901. 

But greater even than Professor Thayer's power of accom- 
plishment was the power of his personality, for he was a true 
representative of the flower of New England, with many of the 
virtues and attributes which enabled the race to conquer and 
colonize the New World. Belonging, as Dr. Hall 1 says, "to 
the cultivated circle, which, while practising to the full the 
virtue of hospitality, were yet believers in plain living and 
high thinking!" his was, moreover, 

"The homely beauty of the good old cause 
. . . peace . . . our fearful innocence, 
And pure religion breathing household laws." 

Above all, of the last, for the "ruling power within" of Mr. 
Thayer's noble and useful life was his deep and beautiful faith. 
A strong Unitarian from the time of his boyhood conversion, 
he was often called on for addresses on occasions such as the 

1 Memorial sketch by the Rev. Edward Henry Hall, D.D., in the Harvard Gradu- 
ates Magazine for June, 1902, x. 507. 

I8l 



Annals of the 

"Unitarian Festival" and was identified with the best interests 
of his Denomination. 1 

In 1877 his name was mentioned in connection with an 
Associate Justiceship of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massa- 
chusetts; and in 1900 President McKinley offered him a 
position on the Philippine Commission, neither of which he 
accepted. 

He was instrumental in procuring for Harvard, in 1897, the 
restoration of the original Charter of the Harvard Chapter of 
Phi Beta Kappa, which had been lost for over one hundred 
years. 

Thayer received the degree of LL.D. from the State Uni- 
versity of Iowa in 189 1, from Harvard in 1894, and from Yale 
in 1901. He was a member of the Massachusetts Historical 
Society, Vice-President of The Colonial Society of Massachu- 
setts, a member of the Saint Botolph Club of Boston and of 
many other societies, and a Fellow of the American Academy 
of Arts and Sciences. The '52 Dining Club was never the same 
after his death. 

Mr. Thayer had four children : William Sydney Thayer, born 
23 June, 1864 (H. C. 1885), LL.D. Washington (Maryland) 
1907, Professor of Clinical Medicine, Johns Hopkins 1905, and 
Fellow of the American Academy; Ezra Ripley Thayer, born 21 
February, 1866 (H. C. 1888, graduating at the head of his 
class), LL.D. Brown 1912, Fellow of the American Academy, 
Dane Professor of Law and Dean of the Harvard Law School 
from 1910 until his death in September, 191 5, — his splendid 
work in that capacity being worthy of his father's son; Theo- 
dora, who was an artist of great talent, no longer living; and 
Sarah Bradford, the wife of John Worthington Ames (H. C. 
1892) of Cambridge. 

Mr. Thayer died on February fourteenth, 1902, and by a 
singular coincidence his passing, as had been his coming, was 
attended by a terrible snow-storm, and no greater proof of the 
love and reverence in which he was held could be given than 
the presence of the five hundred Harvard Law students who 
followed his coffin to Appleton Chapel through the drifts of 
falling snow. 

He was buried at Sleepy Hollow, Concord. "The beautiful 

1 For the text of a "Transmittendum" executed by Professor Thayer, see p. 430, 
-post. 

182 



Harvard Class of 1852 

wreath sent by the '52 Class," Mrs. Thayer wrote to Denny, 
"alone of all the flowers lay upon his coffin as we left it in the 
grave, on the beautiful hill where we have left him. How 
much he cared for you all!" 

One needs but to read the Tributes in the volumes of the 
Massachusetts Historical Society l and The Colonial Society 
of Massachusetts to realize how his friends loved, honored and 
mourned him; and the feeling of many is expressed in the 
Sonnet 2 written by his classmate Williamson: 

"The College elms were white with falling snow 
When through their aisles we bore him, friend and friend, 
With lingering steps, attending to the end 
A life which glorified this life below. 
Rank upon rank his pupils came, to show 
The honors which on Learning's Courts attend, 
And now, at last, the triumphs which transcend 
All tears of sorrow, and all voice of woe. 
With keen, bright blade this knight could meet and dare 
The subtle masks of sophistry; his art 
Was truth; unfaltering, dauntless, void of wrong! 
Sunshine was on his lips and in his heart; 
Pure, valiant, modest, helpful, wise and strong ■ — ■ 
Such was thy path through life, beloved Thayer." 



GORHAM THOMAS 

The son of Dr. Alexander (H. C. 1822) and Elizabeth Malcolm 
(Rand 3 ) Thomas, Gorham Thomas was born in Boston on 
the seventh of September, 1832. He fitted for college at the 
Boston Latin School, and as his father resided in Cambridge 
he lived at home during his College days. 

At Commencement he delivered a Disquisition on "The 
Prospects of Australia," and on graduating, he entered the 
Tremont Medical School, Boston; but his time of study was 
brief, for he died in Cambridge on the sixteenth of August, 
1853, another of the victims of consumption. There is a 
picture of him in the Class Book, a delicate face with a high 

1 2 Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, xvi. 13-19, 148-150: Pub- 
lications of The Colonial Society of Massachusetts, vii. 296-318. 

2 Ibid. vii. 307. 

3 Daughter of Dr. Isaac Rand (H. C. 1787). 

183 






Annals of the 

forehead, and an expression of great purity and refinement and 
some sadness. His Classmates did not forget him when they 
met for their first anniversary, but sent the flowers from their 
table to his sick-room. 

The following tribute to Thomas's fine character is from a 
letter of condolence to his father, written by D. E. Ware, 
Gurney and Page: 

With his name we connect nothing that is not honorable in deed 
and virtuous in character. Moreover, to the character that com- 
mands respect he united the qualities that inspire love. His kindly 
nature expressed itself spontaneously in acts of charity and good will 
which now appeal to our sensibilities with peculiar force. . . . By 
the community in which he lived, and of which he had not yet become 
an active member, his name perhaps may cease to be mentioned, but 
for one generation at least it shall live in the hearts and memories 
of his classmates. 

In 1865, in memory of his son, Dr. Thomas founded the Gor- 
ham Thomas Scholarship in the Harvard Graduate School of 
Arts and Sciences. 



SAMUEL LOTHROP THORNDIKE 

One of the most popular and charming of the Class of 1852, 
Samuel Lothrop Thorndike, was born in Beverly on the 
twenty-eighth of December, 1829, the son of Albert and 
Joanna Batchelder (Lovett) Thorndike. 

He fitted for College at the Beverly Academy, and the 
Boston Latin School, and participated in the Exhibitions of 
October, 1850 and 185 1, his part at the latter being an English 
Oration on the "Benefits which the Spirit of Chivalry has 
bequeathed to the Present Age," — an appropriate theme, for 
his unfailing and gentle courtesy was always tinged with the 
chivalrous gentlemanliness of another era. He was a member 
of the Phi Beta Kappa, and of almost all the College Societies, 
including the Odd Fellows, Natural History, Alpha Delta Phi, 
and the Institute of 1770; he was President of the Hasty Pud- 
ding Club, and Deputy Marshal of the Porcellian Club. 

He left College before Class Day in order to accompany his 
friend Hooper on a journey around the world in a vessel be- 
longing to the paternal Hooper, which was used for the China 

184 



Harvard Class of 1852 

trade. He wrote home, en route, from California of their having 
visited a mine and washed out several panfuls of earth, and 
collected some specimens of an inferior quality of gold. The 
epistle was dated 27 May and reached Cambridge on July 
third, somewhat of a contrast to the mails of today. 

He and Hooper having returned from their travels, Thorn- 
dike entered the Law School. Receiving his degree of LL.B. 
in July, 1854, he went into the office of Sidney Bartlett, Esq. 
(H. C. 1818), and was admitted to the Suffolk Bar in June, 1855. 
In October he opened an office "with Pratt of Ours at 47 Court 
Street," he wrote in the Class Book, "under the name of 
Thorndike & Pratt," whence they removed to the "New Iron 
Building" at 42 Court Street two years later, and proceeded 
for some time longer to languish "briefless and forlorn." In 
1859 Thorndike was appointed- an Assistant Register in Bank- 
ruptcy; and on November second of the same year he married 
Rosanna Langdon Wells, daughter of the late Chief Justice 
Daniel Wells. In 1861 he entered the office of William H. 
Gardiner, Esq., and with him, and later with his son Charles P. 
Gardiner, he was associated in the care of trust property for 
forty-seven years. Having been admitted to practice at the 
Bar of the Supreme Court of the United States, he received, 
in 1867, the appointment of Register in Bankruptcy for the 
Fourth District of Massachusetts, retaining the office until the 
repeal of the Bankruptcy Law. 

Mr. Thorndike's business interests, however, were by no 
means confined to the practice of his profession. He was a 
Director in numerous corporations; among others, the "Blair 
Roads" Land Companies before they were absorbed in the 
Northwestern; a Director and Controller, together with T. 
Jefferson Coolidge, of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Rail- 
road from 1880 to 1883; a Director of the Lowell and of the 
Chicopee Manufacturing Companies; Director and President of 
the Boston and Roxbury Mill Corporation; Trustee and Vice- 
President of the Suffolk Savings Bank; Trustee and member of 
the Finance Committee of the Perkins Institution and Massa- 
chusetts School for the Blind; and President of the Portland, 
Saco and Portsmouth Railroad Company. He was, moreover, 
an ardent Freemason, and belonged to endless different orders, 
having been Deputy Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of 
Massachusetts, and a member of the St. Bernard Commandery 

185 



Annals of the 

of Knights Templars, in 1897 receiving the thirty-third degree, 
the highest Masonic honor. 

One of Mr. Thorndike's friends wrote to his son : 

All who knew your father will remember him as one of that fine 
group of gentlemen who lived in busy times and yet kept the stand- 
ards of a day that found time for all the nobler things in life. 

No truer description could be given of Mr. Thorndike's multi- 
farious interests in matters that "are worth while." First in 
his heart was his Music, for which he had great natural talent, 
and in which he was wholly self-taught. His sweet baritone 
voice made him a welcome member of the Choirs of the First 
Church and of St. Peter's Church in Beverly, of Christ Church, 
Cambridge, and for a time of Trinity Church, Boston; he also 
had charge of the Christmas music at St. Peter's, Beverly, and 
was choir master at Christ Church, Cambridge; and he himself 
composed some small pieces of Church music. He was a 
member of the Chorus Club of the Handel and Haydn, and of 
The Cecilia, of which he was the first President. He rarely 
missed one of the Symphony Concerts, given first in the old 
Music Hall, and later in the new one under the auspices of the 
Harvard Musical Association, of which he was successively 
Treasurer and President, and occupied, unfailingly, the same 
or a corresponding seat. He was, furthermore, Treasurer and 
Vice-President of the New England Conservatory of Music and 
Vice-President of the Choral Society. 

Mr. Thorndike was Treasurer of the Harvard Alumni 
Association from 1876 until 1904, when he declined re-election. 
He was a member also of the Examiner Club, to which he was 
elected in 1884, of the New England Historic Genealogical 
Society, a Director of the Bunker Hill Monument Association, 
President of the Old Cambridge Shakspere Association, and 
for a time of the Beverly Shakspere Club. He was likewise a 
member of The Unitarian Club of Boston, and of the Massa- 
chusetts Historical Society, and a Councillor of The Colonial 
Society of Massachusetts, belonging, moreover, to the Somerset 
Club, the Union, St. Botolph and the Tavern Clubs of Boston; 
of the last three named he was a charter member. 

In 1893 he wrote a sketch of the History of the Union Club, 
and he contributed to the Publications of The Colonial Society 
of Massachusetts a Memoir of Benjamin Apthorp Gould, 

186 



Harvard Class of 1852 

LL.D. (H, C. 1844), an article on New England Psalmody and a 
tribute to his classmate Thayer, as well as articles to different 
magazines, wielding a facile pen with graceful ease. • 

It is all but impossible to convey any idea of Mr. Thorndike's 
personality, for everything he did and said was imbued with 
the intangible something we call "charm." One who loves 
his fellowmen is always loved by them, and in addition to his 
genial, sunny manner and exquisite refinement, he was endowed 
with a gift of humor which made him a delightful companion. 
This crops out especially in letters to old friends, wherein he 
gives rein to an irresistible and almost boyish mirth. Denny's 
obliging custom was to delegate to him the task, and it was no 
sinecure, of providing the Class with a room in one of the 
College buildings for the Commencement rendezvous. The 
following note is, evidently, a reply to an adjuration on the 
subject from the Class Secretary: 

May 4, 1894. 
Dear Denny: 

No, I have n't "gone to sleep in the class-room." I wish I had. 
Then I should know that we had a class-room. At present I know 
that we have not any. 

What should you think of hiring a night-lunch-car? That would 
accommodate our usual number, and would be disengaged at that 
hour. It would also be outside of Faculty jurisdiction. 

We cannot close this most inadequate sketch of Mr. 
Thorndike without speaking of his personal beauty. Time 
spared him, and the picture of him taken shortly before his 
death is almost incredibly like the Daguerreotype of nearly 
sixty years before at the time of his graduation. 

To the last he wore the "rose of youth upon him" in out- 
ward semblance, as in heart and mind. 

"For all that fair is, is by nature good: 
That is a signe to know the gentle blood." 

After an illness of but three days Mr. Thorndike died at his 
summer home in Weston, Massachusetts, on the eighteenth 
of June, 191 1. Mrs. Thorndike survived him, and three chil- 
dren: Albert (H. C. 188 1); Sturgis Hooper (H. C. 1890); and 
Mary Duncan, wife of Charles Henry Fiske (H. C. 1893). l 

1 Memoir of Samuel Lothrop Thorndike in Proceedings of the Massachusetts 
Historical Society, xlviii. 124-127. 

I8 7 



Annals of the 

DAVID CHURCHMAN TRIMBLE 

Few of the men of '52 can have been more dearly loved than 
"Dave Trimble," as he was always called. He was the son of 
General Isaac Ridgeway * and Maria C. (Presstman) Trimble, 
and was born in Baltimore on the eighteenth of April, 1832. 

He prepared for College at the school of Michael McNally, and 
entered Harvard in the Sophomore year. He was a member of 
the Natural History Society and of the Institute of 1770 and de- 
livered at Commencement an Essayon "The Poetical Element of 
the Scottish Character"; hewasAssistantMarshalon Class Day. 

Returning to his home in Baltimore after graduation, he 
immediately went into business, and at one time was con- 
nected with the banking-house of Alexander Brown and Sons, 
one of the firm, Mr. George G. Brown, being his intimate and 
lifelong friend. During the winter of 1855 and '56, he was in 
Paris, where his classmate Oliver saw more or less of him. 

Mr. Trimble espoused the Confederate Cause in the Civil 
War, and volunteered, but his delicate health prevented his 
engaging in much, if any, active service. 

On November ninth, 1859, he married Sally Scott Lloyd, 
daughter of Edward and Alicia (McBlain) Lloyd of Wye 
House, Talbot County, Maryland. She inherited an estate of 
eleven hundred acres, and on the advice of his friends, who 
hoped that his health would benefit thereby, he took up farm- 
ing, and established himself on the Eastern Shore of Maryland 
at Wye Heights, whence he wrote in the June of 1887 to his 
classmate Stedman: 

"From the fulness of the heart, the mouth speaketh," and doubt- 
less also the pen writeth, and I know you meant every one of your 
kind invitations to Airs. Trimble and myself, my old friend and 
classmate, but in the language of a modern writer, "it can't be did." 

The 29th of June is about the time of our wheat harvest, and as 
that cereal is all the Gods have left me, to supply me with the bare 
necessaries of life, I must attend to it closely, for not being a member 
of one of the Tribes of Israel (not even of one of the lost tribes), I 
cannot expect manna from the Heavens above to say nothing of 
quails and other delicacies the Israelites of old were provided with. 

So the Class of '87 will have to "go it" without me, and worse 
than that, so will the remnants of the old class of '52, God bless them. 

1 General Trimble's name was originally Isaac Trimble. 
188 



PLATE XV 








TRI M BLE 
WALLACE 



VI NAL 



U PHAM 
D. E. WARE 



Harvard Class of 1852 

It seems at least a century ago, that poor Charley Upham and I, 
Marshals, guided the footsteps of the '52ers. Alas, how thin their 
ranks now. Give them each a cordial handclasp for me, and wish 
them a long and peaceful journey on the down hill of life. 

Yours most truly, - 

Dave Trimble. 

Even an out-door life could not save Mr. Trimble from the 
tubercular disease which carried off so many of his Classmates, 
and he died at the house of his son in Baltimore on the eleventh 
of December, 1888. Mrs. Trimble survived him, with their 
only child, Isaac Ridgeway Trimble, a surgeon of unusual 
talent and ability, who died prematurely on the twenty-fourth 
of February, 1908; in his memory the Trimble Lectureship 
was founded for the benefit of the Medical and Chirurgical 
Faculty of Maryland. 

The resolutions which were sent by the Class of '52 to Mrs. 
David Trimble on her husband's death give the best descrip- 
tion of his sweet-hearted personality: 

Resolved, that during our College days there was no one of our 
comrades who found his way to the hearts of all who knew him more 
quickly or more surely than Dave Trimble. A bright and sunny 
disposition, an overflowing fund of wit and humor, a warm and 
generous heart, and all the nameless qualities which go to make up 
the true gentleman were heartily and enthusiastically recognized as 
belonging to him in an unusual degree. . . . Such qualities made 
him in mature manhood loved, honored and respected in all the 
relations of life as a true man and an earnest and faithful Christian. 



CHARLES WENTWORTH UPHAM, JR. 

Charles Wentworth Upham, the eldest son of the Honorable 
Charles Wentworth (H. C. 1821) and Mary Ann (Holmes) 
Upham, was born in Salem, Massachusetts, August nineteenth, 
1830. As his health was delicate, he was always sent away 
to the country during the summer season, but in the winter 
he attended the Salem schools and prepared for College at 
the Latin School under Mr. Oliver Carlton. 1 In the summer 

1 For an interesting and amusing reference to Oliver Carlton's discipline, see 
Choate's Memoir of Leverett Saltonstall in the Publications of The Colonial Society 
of Massachusetts, v. 364. 

189 



Annals of the 

of 1847, with his future Classmates Darwin Ware and Henry 
Stone, Upham went to Portland by steamer, and thence the 
three boys made their way around the White Mountains to 
Andover, Maine, on foot; from Andover they retraced their 
steps to Winnipiseogee and passing through Concord, New 
Hampshire, on their return, they reached home at the end of 
twenty-one days, having walked all the way. 

In College, Upham was a member of the Harvard Natural 
History Society, of the Hasty Pudding Club and of the Institute 
of 1770. At the Inauguration of President Sparks, in 1849, he 
was College Marshal; he was also Chief Marshal at the 
celebration of the Seventy-fifth Anniversary of the Battle of 
Bunker Hill, on the seventeenth of June, 1850; Chief Marshal 
at the Railroad Jubilee celebration in Boston, in September, 
1851; Chief Marshal at Class Day; and Vice-President at the 
Class Supper. It was he who originated the idea of Class- 
daguerreotypes, and the Class of 1852 was the first to inau- 
gurate the custom of Class pictures, which has always since 
been followed. 

After graduation, Upham attended the Dane Law School and 
was admitted to the Essex Bar in 1855. He opened an office in 
Salem, but in the same year sailed for Europe, escorted down the 
harbor by his faithful classmates, Williamson and Coolidge. 

In England and on the Continent he passed two pleasantly 
profitable years, constantly running across members of the 
Class of '52, who seemed to look on Paris as their Mecca. 
Upham wrote home delightful letters to his chosen friend 
Joe Choate; one from Paris in late October, 1855, shows how 
his heart went out to the companions of his College days, and 
tells how he and Dwight 1 and Arthur Lyman 2 celebrated the 
festive occasion of Commencement week on the Rhine and 
toasted Old Harvard heartily in the wine of the country. 

In Berlin, where he found many friends in the September of 
the following year, Upham met Sam Shaw 3 and was introduced 
by him to the Ticknor 4 family, who invited him to repair to 
their house the next morning 

at about 10 and see the great Humboldt who had made an appoint- 
ment to call at half past that hour! I was commissioned to extend 

1 Wilder Dwight, H. C. 1853. 2 Arthur Theodore Lyman, H. C. 1853. 

3 Samuel Savage Shaw, H. C. 1853. 4 George Ticknor, LL.D. 

I90 



Harvard Class of 1852 

the invitation to Shaw — so and accordingly at 10 S and I presented 
ourselves and waited, enjoying the agreeable conversation of Mr. 
Ticknor and his very intelligent family until half past 10, when, 
punctual like Washington, his Excellency von Humboldt was 
announced and ushered in! You know his countenance, for what 
American does not? You have read accounts of visits paid him in 
his study and hardly desire a new one, but yet I know that your 
interest in the great and good Humboldt will lead you upon the 
whole to wish and expect me to say more than that I have seen him 
and listened to him and I will give you my notes on the interview. 
As soon as he was announced, all eyes were turned to the door, and 
we presently saw him coming briskly in, of small stature and quick 
movements, his face full of intelligence and kindliness and as fresh 
as it is possible to imagine a busy life of 87 years would permit a face 
to appear. He approached the ladies, shook hands with them and 
bowed to all in the room in the most interested manner, speaking 
English with great fluency. After being seated on the sofa (which is 
considered by Germans the best, most honorable place) he spoke 
mostly in French, for he prefers to converse either in that or his native 
tongue. After attending to a little matter which related to Agassiz, 
concerning the miscarriage of a letter sent to the Professor, he talked 
on general subjects. He happened to mention that each and every 
year two thousand letters are despatched from his own hand, and 
everybody knows his knee is his desk! He is a most rapid and enter- 
taining talker or rather discourser. In the course of an hour he 
seemed to touch on almost every topic and used German, French and 
English. He alluded to his South American travels and his experience 
in the Andes. He said he still felt the effects of the exposure he 
suffered there. He made jokes, told stories and philosophised. He 
made arrangements to afford opportunity for us to see especial objects 
and places of interest, and altogether, you never saw such a bustling, 
animated person. When he departed it was voted that he was a 
wonder and to have seen him was worth more than to have seen a 
great city. In the latter part of the morning we met him again at 
the studio of the great sculptor Rauch, where we compared the bust 
in marble and the living man Humboldt together, and if you chance 
to visit some day Mr. Corcoran in Washington, then you will see this 
splendid work and may rest assured that it is as perfect a likeness as 
it is an admirable production of Art. Rauch himself is a noble old 
man and his genius has contributed wonderfully to adorn Berlin and 
to illustrate whatever is good in Prussian History. 

When upon the point of sailing for home, Upham developed 
the first symptoms of the fatal malady which in those days 

191 



Annals of the 

seemed ever lying in wait to strike down the flower of our 
youth. Soon after his return he decided to move to Buffalo 
and settled there in the summer of 1857; on being admitted to 
the New York Bar, two years later, he became a partner of 
the Hon. S. G. Haven and Samuel Dorsheimer, and on the 
twenty-second of June, 1859, he married Mr. Haven's daughter 
Mary. 

Handsome, charming, cultivated and deservedly popular, 
there are few to whom life could have held more of promise 
than to Charles Upham in the hour when he was called upon 
to leave it; with entire resignation, and with perfect faith, 

"sustained and soothed 
By an unfaltering trust," 

he did, in very truth, approach the grave 

"Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch 
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams." 

He died in Buffalo, on April second, i860. 

The lines written in his memory by his uncle, Dr. Oliver 
Wendell Holmes, call up a graphic picture of his rare and 
charming personality: 

He was all sunshine; in his face 
The very soul of sweetness shone; 
Fairest and gentlest of his race; 
None like him we can call our own. 

Something there was of one that died 
In her fresh spring-time long ago. 
Our first dear Mary, angel-eyed, 
Whose smile it was a bliss to know. 

Something of her whose love imparts 
Such radiance to her days' decline, 
We feel its twilight in our hearts 
Bright as the earliest morning-shine. 

Yet richer strains our eye could trace 
That made our plainer mould more fair, 
That curved the lip with happier grace, 
That waved the soft and silken hair. 

192 



Harvard Class of 1852 



Dust unto dust! the lips are still 
That only spoke to cheer and bless; 
The folded hands lie white and chill, 
Unclasped from sorrow's last caress. 



CHARLES CARROLL VINAL 

Charles Carroll Vinal was born in Scituate, Massachusetts, 
on the seventeenth of September, 183 1, the son of Charles and 
Elizabeth Kimball (Beale) Vinal. He prepared for college at 
Derby Academy, Hingham, and after graduation was for some 
time Superintendent of the Sunday School at Hollis Street 
Church, where the Rev. Starr King was then settled, accom- 
panying the latter on his tour through the White Mountains 
while Mr. King was collecting material for his book "The 
White Hills" and acting as his assistant in his pleasant labors. 

After finishing his course at the Divinity School, in 1856, 
and before taking a parish, Vinal went to Europe with his 
classmate Alger, upon his return accepting a call to the Uni- 
tarian Parish at North Andover where he was settled for 
fourteen years. During his incumbency at North Andover he 
served on the School Board, writing their Annual Report, and 
meanwhile declining calls to the Unitarian churches at Quincy 
and Fall River. In 1869 he was a delegate to the National 
Unitarian Conference at New York. In 1870 he resigned from 
his North Andover parish, and was in the same year installed 
over the church in Kennebunk, Maine, remaining there twenty- 
one years; on leaving there, he was settled over the church at 
Lebanon, New Hampshire, — until 1897. In that year Mr. 
Vinal definitely retired from the ministry, wishing, after forty 
years of unremitting parish work, to pass his remaining days 
in leisure. 

He was married in 1864, on the fifth of October, to Abigail 
Greenleaf Aubin, daughter of Joshua and Mary Bussey 
(Newell) Aubin of Newburyport; they had two daughters, 
Mary Aubin Vinal, born 10 January, 1867, and Annie Gore 
Vinal, born 13 September, 1869. 

No man who enters upon his chosen calling with the spirit 
of consecration which was Mr. Vinal's can fail of success, and 
one of those who knew him best has said that "his ministry 
was most successful, because of his love for his work, and faith- 

193 



Annals of the 

ful discharge of its duties." "The ministry has its trials," he 
used to say, "but its compensations are far greater." Some 
conception of his power as a preacher may be formed from the 
stanzas written by Dr. Thomas William Parsons (H. C. A1853) 
after hearing a sermon from him at Scituate : 

Lucerna sit Pedibus Meis 

Lamp to my feet! shine forth into my soul 
That I may better see what way I tread 
In the dark hours, and when I lose control 
Of mine own steps, by vague desire misled; 

In faltering moments, when I scarce can pray, 
Through failing faith or wandering thoughts, and sink 
Back to my bondage, let thy kindly ray, 
Lamp to my feet! prevent me on the brink. 

Of genial temperament, with great capacity for overcoming 
obstacles, Mr. Vinal was a zealous worker in the Temperance 
cause during his Kennebunk pastorate, lecturing on the subject 
in many of the adjacent towns. He was also, for years, Secre- 
tary and Treasurer of the Maine Unitarian Association. 

His hope for a few years of well earned repose was not to be 
granted. Soon after settling with his family in their new home 
in Cambridge, he succumbed to a complication of diseases 
which reconciled those who loved him to the end, since longer 
life would have entailed greater suffering. With the last words 
"Soon over," his "spirit winged its flight." 

He died on the twenty-ninth of December, 1897. 

JOHN SINGER WALLACE 

"The undersigned was born in Petersburg, Ohio, January 29, 
183 1." His parents were James Wallace and Margaret Cham- 
bers, who came to this country in the year 181 2. 

Bub attended common school with very little improvement, for 
he was a wayward child, until his tenth year, when he began to 
clerk in his father's store. At fifteen he was sent to Alleghany Col- 
lege to "get an education," 

Wallace tells us in the Class Book. After a year at the College 
and nine months' tutoring from his brother-in-law, the Rev-' 

194 



Harvard Class of 1852 

erend L. Burton, he entered the Freshman Class of Western 
Reserve College in 1848, repairing to Harvard for his Senior 
year. 

Studying after graduation at the Episcopal Seminary near 
Alexandria, Virginia, in 1855, he accepted a call as Assistant 
Rector to Saint Paul's Church, Louisville, Kentucky, resign- 
ing, in 1858, to take charge of St. Andrew's Church in that 
city, — a parish which he had himself organized. 

In the same year he married, and in 1859 "moved across 
the river to New Albany," Ohio, as he wrote to Denny, and 
was for two years Rector of Saint Paul's in that city, but 

the war breaking out, and being anxious to do something in the 
immediate service of my country, I applied for a chaplaincy in the 
Navy, occupying a parish at Piqua, Ohio, however, until near two 
years more had expired, when, in the Spring of 1863, I was at length 
appointed to my present position. I was at first ordered to New- 
port, Rhode Island, as Professor in the Naval Academy, then tem- 
porarily situated at that place. Here I remained two years, when 
the Academy removing back to Annapolis, I applied for orders to 
sea, and was sent to the Gulf Squadron, from which I was trans- 
ferred, in July, 1867, to my present post as chaplain of the Flag- 
ship "Franklin," then destined for the waters of Europe, Admiral 
Farragut in command. For the last year and more, therefore, I 
united my duties as pastor of a ship with more than seven hundred 
men on board, with the pleasure of traveling. 

Wallace married, 13 April, 1858, Mary Diana Allmand, 
daughter of Hanson Allmand of Norfolk, Virginia. 

Mrs. Wallace died in 1865, leaving a daughter, Mary Diana 
Allmand, wife of George Lincoln Dillman, who graduated in 
1880 from the United States Naval Academy, and a son, John 
Benton Wallace, born in 1862, who graduated from the Law 
School of Ann Arbor, Michigan. 

Wallace remained in the Navy until 1893, when having 
reached the age limit of sixty-two, he was forced to retire on 
his birthday. He was the oldest Chaplain in the service, and 
received the title of Captain, his last station being the Navy 
Yard at Charlestown, Massachusetts. 

Captain Wallace would gladly have remained longer in ac- 
tive service, for having formed no new ties, and being with- 
out a home, his interests centered in his profession, and there 
is a touch of sadness in his note to the Class Secretary of 

195 



Annals of the 

June, 1893, in which he tells of his enforced retirement, and 
adds that he has just returned from a trip to the Hawaiian 
Islands. His sailor's life had given him a taste for wander- 
ing, and when he last wrote to Denny from Alameda, Cali- 
fornia, in June, 1896, he said that he had just returned from 
a long jaunt to Hawaii, Japan, China, Ceylon, India and 
Burmah, of a year's duration. "Let me know who has died 
in the last two years. I am not sure that I shall not do that 
thing myself one of these days." He lived, however, ten 
years longer, dying at Oakland, California, on the twenty-first 
of January, 1906. 

He was a member of the Loyal Legion; from the memorial 
published by the Society a week after his death, we quote 
the description of his personal characteristics : 

He was a man of fine intelligence and of varied experience, bril- 
liant in conversation and full of anecdote. He had traveled "the 
world around" and remembered and could tell of all he had seen. 
His genial character and equable disposition made him a favorite 
with all who met him. He was in every respect a gentleman, — a 
truly Christian gentleman. 



DARWIN ERASTUS WARE 

Erastus Darwin Ware, as he was originally named, was 
the son of Erastus and Clarissa Dillaway (Wardwell) Ware, 
and was born in Salem on the eleventh of February, 183 1. 

The inconvenience caused by the similarity in the names 
of himself and his kinsman Erastus Davis Ware, who lived 
near him, led to his transposing his own names, as he ap- 
proached manhood; he was thereafter known as Darwin 
Erastus. 

When he was two years old his father bought a large farm 
at Marblehead, which was thenceforth the family home, but 
it was so near the Salem boundary line that Darwin was en- 
abled to enjoy the superior advantages of the Salem schools. 

Mr. Thayer tells us 1 that in the College Catalogue 

he stood ... as one of the eight boys from [Salem]. Two others, 
from neighboring towns, always counted among their classmates, 

1 Tribute to Darwin E. Ware at the April Meeting, 1897, of The Colonial Society 
of Massachusetts, Publications, iii. 440. 

I96 



Harvard Class of 1852 

as belonging to the Salem group; and these ten men later on in- 
cluded among them, in the persons of our associate Thorndike, the 
two Choates (William and Joseph) and Darwin Ware, half of our 
"first eight," as they used to call the highest scholars in the Class. 

Darwin was popular at college, where his fellows regarded 
him always as a "coming man." He was a member of the 
Natural History Society and the Institute of 1770, and Treas- 
urer and Orator of the Hasty Pudding Club. 

Always imbued with the courage of his convictions, it was 
remembered of him that "at his initiation into one of the 
chief of the College Societies, at a point where, according 
to a venerable usage, the novice is required, by an awful 
voice, to "Swear!" Ware obstinately refused to swear, and, 
after an ineffectual struggle with him, the unheard-of varia- 
tion of affirming him had to be resorted to." 1 He and Mr. 
Bradlaugh of non-juring memory would assuredly have shaken 
hands! 

Ware was among the Sophomore recipients of a Detur, and 
took the First Boylston Prize for Elocution, in 1850, and the 
First Prize for Dissertation, in 1852. 

He had a part at the Exhibitions of October, 1850, and 
October, 1 85 1, and delivered an English Oration at Com- 
mencement; graduating fifth in the Class, he was of course 
in the Phi Beta Kappa. 

After teaching for a year at Mr. Weld's School in Jamaica 
Plain, Ware entered the Dane Law School in September, 1853, 
leaving there in 1855. His first association on beginning to 
practise was with a much older lawyer and not being alto- 
gether successful, it was terminated in 1866, when he entered 
partnership with John T. Morse, Jr. (H. C. i860); they re- 
mained together until 1872. His subsequent partnerships 
were with George S. Hale (H. C. 1844), Peleg W. Chandler 
and John E. Hudson (H. C. 1862). 

Living at first in the paternal home, Ware was a member 
of the Massachusetts House of Representatives from Marble- 
head, in 1863, and during 1864 and 1865, Senator from the 
district which included Marblehead. 

In 1866 he was appointed by the Secretary of the Treas- 
ury a member of the Commission to revise and codify the 

1 Tribute to Darwin E. Ware at the April Meeting, 1897, of The Colonial Society 
of Massachusetts, Publications, iii. 440. 

197 



Annals of the 

revenue, customs and shipping laws of the United States, and 
in the succeeding winter he passed several months at Wash- 
ington. In the same year (1866) he became a member of the 
Massachusetts Board of Harbor Commissioners, where he 
filled an important place until his resignation eight years 
later; and it was sometime during these years that he de- 
clined the offer of a seat on the Supreme Bench of the Hawai- 
ian Islands. 

Mr. Ware was an ardent Anti-Slavery man, as could not 
fail to be the case with one to whom none in distress ever 
appealed in vain. 

A devoted son of Harvard, he considered his greatest tri- 
umph the inestimable service which he rendered his college 
while in the Senate. The Overseers had theretofore been 
elected by the Legislature. Appreciating the evils and in- 
justice of the custom, Mr. Ware drafted a measure for trans- 
ferring the choice of Overseers to the Alumni of the College. 
He had the assistance of Francis E. Parker (H. C. 1841) in 
the Senate and of his classmate, Coolidge, in the House, but 
all realized that the success of the measure, which passed the 
Senate by one vote and the House by the slenderest majority, 
was due wholly to his own vigilance and ability. Well might 
it be regarded as the achievement of a lifetime! 

Having been, of course, elected a member of the new Board 
in 1866, Ware filled the office until 1878, and again from 1879 
till 1 88 1, meanwhile serving on a committee of the Overseers 
in 1869, and in the same year he was on the Committee to 
visit the Law School. 

In spite of the engrossing nature of his professional and 
political life, Mr. Ware's interests were many and various. 
He was President at one time of the Boston Civil Service Re- 
form Association, and Treasurer and Director of the Asso- 
ciated Charities of Boston from 188 1 until his death, a member 
and sometime President of the Tariff Reform League and 
Vice-President of the Examiner Club. A faithful Unitarian, 
he was a member of the Society for Promoting Theological 
Education and in 1881 gave an address at the Unitarian Fes- 
tival; he lectured also before the Young Men's Christian 
Union. He was always a scholar, his literary activity ranging 
from metaphysics to Greek Philosophy, and shortly before 
his death he suddenly gave proof of talent in an unexpected 

198 



Harvard Class of 1852 

line, composing sonnets of "rare expressiveness and point and 
rugged strength," his friend Mr. John Noble tells us. 1 

There can be no better description of Mr. Ware's character 
than that given by the same friend : 

One of his most prominent traits was his ever-ready and chival- 
rous devotion to a friend or a cause. If either needed him, a word 
was enough. He threw himself into the breach, whatever and 
wherever it was, courageously and cheerfully, even at a sacrifice to 
himself. He might always be relied on to fill a gap or meet an emer- 
gency. Another characteristic was his calm serenity of temper, 
which nothing seemed to disturb. You never saw in him a shadow 
of ill-nature or moodiness or moroseness. He was not harsh or 
hasty in his judgments or censorious in his criticisms, though by 
no means incapable of an honest indignation which would flash out 
with withering severity at anything mean or low or dishonorable, 
unjust or oppressive. Most marked of all, in every relation of life, 
was his high purpose, his sturdy moral sense, his robust conscience, 
and his independence and courage. 

On the twenty-sixth of May, 1868, Mr. Ware married at 
Washington Adelaide Frances Dickey, daughter of David W. 
and Eliza Dickey, of Veazie, Maine, and their happiness was 
crowned by the birth of their son Richard Darwin on their 
first wedding anniversary. 

His classmate Thayer says of him: 

I must not touch upon matters too private to be mentioned here; 
but I cannot help saying just a word or two upon one of the most 
engaging and characteristic aspects of our friend. As I have in- 
dicated, he had always a delightful enthusiasm of nature, which 
glowed in his face whenever he met a friend. Always he was a 
man of sentiment, a reader and admirer of what is best in poetry 
and literature and the drama; fond of treasuring up these things 
in his memory and saying them over. He himself was a poet, and 
he wrote verse which was strong and good, and full of the high feel- 
ing that found expression in his life. And then, what chiefly I 
wished to say just here, to the end of his days he was a lover. Early 
in life he had conceived of love as the one great, entrancing dream 
and flower of human existence. Many a young man has done that, 
but few are they who in the dust and heat of life have kept the 
freshness of their early dream, and have lived up to it. Ware was 

1 Remarks, in the Publications of The Colonial Society of Massachusetts, iii. 
445-448 . 

199 



Annals of the 

one of these. He had the rare and beautiful qualities, the passion, 
the delicacy, the force and constancy of character, the true nobility 
of soul which such a life requires. And thus it happened that through 
all his life, having once caught sight of his ideal, he "was not dis- 
obedient unto the heavenly vision." 1 

Mr. Ware died at his house in Boston on the second of 
April, 1897. His widow survives him, with their son, Richard 
Darwin, of the Harvard Class of 1890. 



ROBERT WARE 

"When I get married I'll make a note of it here, and when 
I die somebody will, I hope, do me the kind office of record- 
ing that fact here. Should there be anything else to say, 
time will do it. July, 1858." Thus Robert Ware ended his 
record in the Class Book. 

Alas! that all too soon Time did write "Finis" to a life full 
of sweetness and of helpfulness to mankind. 



I was born [Ware further tells us] in Tremont Street, Boston, 
in a house standing on the spot now occupied by the Pavilion Hotel, 
nearly opposite the Stone Chapel, on the second of September, 1833, 
and am a son of Dr. John Ware (H. C. 1813) of this city, and of 
Helen, daughter of the late Dr. Levi Lincoln of Hingham. Edu- 
cated at the Public Latin School, I there contracted friendships 
which flourished during the four years spent at College, and still 
remain green and vigorous. My life, though utterly devoid of in- 
cident, has been on the whole a happy one (so far). 

At College Ware's popularity is demonstrated by his mem- 
bership in the Odd Fellows Society, Natural History Society, 
Hasty Pudding Club, Institute of 1770 and of the Knights 
Punch Bowl. His Commencement part was a Disquisition 
on Latin Poetry of the Christian Church, and immediately 
"after leaving College," as he tells us in the Class Book, "I 
began the study of medicine with my father; it seemed to be 
in some measure, a part of the natural course of things that 
I should adopt the profession which is thus continued in the 

1 Publications of The Colonial Society of Massachusetts, iii. 444, 445. Many of 
the facts, as well as the extracts already acknowledged, are from the Tribute by 
James Bradley Thayer and the Remarks by John Noble before The Colonial Society 
of A-Iassachusetts. See also Ibid., v. 38, 39. 

200 



PLATE XVI 








R.WARE 


WARI NG 


W. R.WARE 


WASH BURN 




WHEELER 



Harvard Class of 1852 

third generation." Ware passed the summer, accordingly, 
with "Page and Rich — Charley Oliver and Whittemore dep- 
pitty sawbones haunting the Cambridge hospitals and the Ben 
Franklin alternately," he wrote Williamson in the September 
of 1852. In May, 1854, he sailed for Europe with his father, 
remaining there until September of the succeeding year, six 
months of the time being passed in Paris studying in the 
hospitals. 

Having graduated from the Harvard Medical School, in 
1856, he began to practise in Boston and in 1857 was appointed 
one of the District Physicians of the Boston Dispensary, a 
post which he stigmatized as bringing him into closer contact 
with the Celtic citizens than is wholly pleasing to a sensitive 
or fastidious disposition. 

But, however unpleasant the disagreeable details, Dr. Ware 
never allowed fastidiousness to interfere with any professional 
duty or deed of kindness, winning the gratitude, trust and 
love of the poor patients whose lives his skill and unremitting 
care had saved and whose sufferings he had alleviated. 

In i860 he prepared a pamphlet on small-pox during an 
epidemic of the disease, which was published for distribution 
by the Massachusetts Legislature, and inured greatly to his 
reputation. 

The Knights Punch Bowl was continued for some years 
after its members had graduated, and Ware was a constant 
attendant at its meetings, one of Stedman's most delightful 
sketches depicting him in his office prescribing for a fair fem- 
inine patient, and bearing beneath the inscription: "The Doc- 
tor thinks it a decided case of cardiac disease, and fears that 
it's contagious." 

With the outbreak of the war Ware immediately entered 
the service of the Sanitary Commission as Inspector, and in 
December writes home humorously from Newport News, 
"Where do you suppose the name of Old Point Comfort came 
from? The place is certainly old, and there is no question as 
to its being a point, but as to comfort, allons doncl" His 
labor was the inspection and superintendence of all hospital 
and sanitary arrangements, and if at first his regulations were 
sometimes thought unnecessarily strict, their importance was 
fully realized later. In the late Spring of 1862, when his 
work among the wounded began, he labored tirelessly, often 

201 



Annals of the 

remaining up all night to ensure that nothing was neglected 
for the relief of the sufferers on the hospital transports. One 
who watched him during those days of stress said : 

He had a passion for usefulness. How many days and nights have 
I not seen him, staggering with fatigue, dropping asleep for minutes 
here and there, where they could be snatched, but working on cheer- 
ful, quiet, observant, and careful for others, never for one instant 
thinking of himself. I have never known modesty like his. I have 
often thought it was his one defect. 

In July, 1862 he went home for a time. The Government 
had taken over the task of transportation, and feeling his oc- 
cupation partly gone, and himself suffering from diarrhoea, 
he determined to remain in Boston until recovered. He at- 
tended the Class Supper, his last one, but haunted by the 
recollection of the scenes of agony he had passed through, 
he felt out of tune with convivial gatherings. In September 
he was offered the office of Surgeon of the Forty-Fourth 
Massachusetts Regiment. He disliked military life, the 
thought of a return to the South filled him with a strange 
sense of foreboding; the future cast its shadow before him, 
and he felt that he should never return, but stronger than 
fear of death was the call of the "stern daughter of the voice 
of God" and his classmate Williamson looked on him for the 
last time as he marched down State Street by the side of the 
regimental Chaplain. 

At Newbern, North Carolina, he labored with all his might 
until the fifth of April, 1863, he and his assistant Dr. Fisher 
feeling that in addition to their regular duties they must im- 
prove the opportunity for surgical and anatomical study af- 
forded them, especially in the cases of mortality among the 
negroes, and it was this and his work in the black camps 
which so pulled Ware down that he fell a victim to typhoid 
pneumonia, a disease which he once told a friend he felt 
would cause his death in the Spring. He died on the tenth 
of April, 1863, at Washington. 

Dr. Edward H. Hall, Chaplain of the Forty-Fourth Regi- 
ment, wrote of him : 

You could hardly tell whether to admire most his remarkable 
skill or his wonderful fidelity. His professional skill was acknowl- 
edged on all sides in the department; but we, who saw him every 

202 



Harvard Class of 1852 

day, were even more struck by the readiness and cheerfulness with 
which he answered every call. A surgeon's office, at best, to a con- 
scientious man, is the most laborious in the regiment. Yet I never 
saw the time, during the hardest marches or at the most untimely 
hours, when Robert hesitated for a second to go to those who needed 
him, and give them all the time that was required. If you knew 
the prevailing standard of official duty in the army, you would 
understand how striking such single-minded fidelity must be. 

But the feeling of the men towards Robert is still more touching 
and even more honorable to him than that of the officers . . . He 
certainly never sought popularity; he exacted stoutly the respect 
that was due to his office, and was most unsparing in unmasking 
the shams by which a surgeon is sure to be beset. Yet in spite of 
all this, his real kindness, his tenderness and sympathy, impressed 
them so deeply, and revealed his true nature so plainly, that they 
could not help feeling more attracted to him than to any other 
officer. They feel his loss deeply and speak of it sadly. So true 
a man always finds himself appreciated by simply acting out the 
promptings of his nature. 

In June, 1892, thirty years after Ware's death, there ap- 
peared in the Boston Evening Transcript a communica- 
tion headed "A Soldier's Gratitude 'After Many Days,'" and 
prefaced by a note, wherein the writer said that among the 
papers of a soldier who had died eighteen months before 
was found the anecdote which is here given: 

On one of the weary days when the writer of this was lying wounded 
in a hospital tent of the Forty-Fourth Massachusetts Regiment, 
near its barracks at New Berne, N. C, — after the battle of White- 
hall, which occurred Dec. 16, 1862 — Dr. Robert Ware our surgeon 
(who died in the service of his country; Heaven bless his memory!) 
the kindest, most devoted friend that soldier ever had, asked me 
one morning if I would not like to have my heavy army-blanket 
changed for a covering a little more cheerful to look at, facetiously 
remarking at the time that some ladies from Massachusetts had 
been "patching up" for the benefit of wounded soldiers, and had 
forwarded a lot of autographs. I could not imagine any connection 
my blanket might have with autographs as a means of exchange, 
but as I always accepted everything from Dr. Ware, even his med- 
icines and probings, with thanks, I readily acquiesced. 

In a short time he returned, followed by "Elisha" {then contra- 
band) bearing an excellent bed quilt. "Here, sergeant," he said, 
"is an album written full. You should have pleasant dreams, now." 
I did not comprehend his remarks till casting my eyes on the com- 

203 



Annals of the 

forter which he had thrown over me, I saw, with tears and a full 
heart, that on every white square was written the name of some one 
who had contributed to the comfort of a wounded brother, — 
stranger though he might be. Day after day I read over the names 
till I came to know them by heart, and pictured to myself the busy 
workers who perhaps wondered, if they should ever hear from that 
quilt again, ■ — whether it would be sure to reach its destination 
and cover some wounded soldier; whether he lived or died, etc. 

Signed G. F. Clark, 44th Regiment 

Loyal, tender, humane, faithful to the small as well as to 
the larger opportunities for kindness, Robert Ware went forth 
to the succor of his fellowmen even although he knew that 
by so doing, he offered up the sacrifice of his own life. 1 

WILLIAM ROBERT WARE 

William Robert Ware, the third of the Ware trio in the 
Class of 1852, was the son of Henry Ware, Jr. (H. C. 1812) 
and Mary Lovell Pickard, and was born in Cambridge on 
the afternoon of Sunday, May twenty-seventh, 1832. At 
the time of his birth, he informs us in the Class Book, he was 
said by his cruel father to resemble only a monkey, which 
he had once seen in New York. 

Having had lung fever five times in four years, his infancy 
was not a period of joy, and he passed a pitiably weak and 
timid childhood, exhausted by the walk to and from school, 
and no doubt by mental distress as well, for at the age of 
eight he joined the Cold Water Army and found it hard to 
reconcile his principles to those of General Harrison, who 
then occupied the place of Hero-in-Chief in his calendar. 2 

Following the school custom, the small octennian fell in 
love with a maiden of twelve or so, and while she smiled upon 
his suit, dreamed the usual roseate childish dreams, but when 
she frowned on him, he was glad to be transferred to a man's 
school, — at nine years old! This educational establishment 
was the Hopkins School, and there the little fellow enjoyed 
great content until he was sent to the Whitman School, where 

1 Many facts have been taken from the Memoir of Dr. Ware by Dr. Edward 
Henry Hall in Harvard Memorial Biographies, i. 238-252. 

2 The reference is to the Presidential election of 1840, — the "Hard Cider" cam- 
paign under the slogan "Tippecanoe and Tyler too." 

204 



Harvard Class of 1852 

he was tormented and unhappy. His father moved, in 1842, 
to Framingham, and dying a year later, Mrs. Ware settled 
in Milton, and the boy became a pupil at the Milton Acad- 
emy. His weak and morbid state of health determined his 
mother to procure an entire change for him, and as his grand- 
father Pickard was an Englishman, and his kinsfolk still 
lived in England, the boy sailed in the Spring of 1846 to visit 
his kindred and at the end of four months returned bright 
and well, having moreover acquired the love for architecture 
which was to be his life work. After a year at Phillips Acad- 
emy, Andover, with Sturgis, Whittemore and Wilder Dwight 
(H. C. 1853) he repaired with the two former to Cambridge. 

A member of the Odd Fellows, Alpha Delta Phi, and Na- 
tural History Society, he was Librarian of the Hasty Pudding 
Club, and chummed during his last year with his namesake 
Darwin. He had parts at the Exhibition of October, 1850, 
October, 1851, and at Commencement, and was in the Phi 
Beta Kappa. 

Tutoring in New York during the Winter of 1853, Ware 
enjoyed the companionship of the others of '52, — Waring, 
Williamson, Hurd and Norris, who were either in or near 
the City, whence Williamson writes to Choate of "Billy 
Bobby hopping about and humming opera airs like a great 
squirrel." Perhaps Ware valued most of all the fellowship 
of Norris, so deeply mourned, so dearly loved, by all his 
classmates. "My thoughts revert most often to Norris's 
sharp, quaint face," he wrote in the Class Book long after 
graduation: "His red curtained room, glowing in the fire- 
light with his big bed in the background, sacred to the repose 
of the fabulous little 'Geordie,' and old sofa by the hearth, 
is the scene to which my wandering mind, as once my idle 
steps, most often turns. 

"Kind heart and true 
Tender and just 
Peace to his dust." 

In 1854 Ware studied engineering at the Lawrence Scien- 
tific School, teaching mathematics meanwhile, and in 1856 
entered the office of Edward C. Cabot, architect. Three 
years later he formed a partnership with Edward South- 
wick Philbrick (H. C. 1846); in 1864 he was in partnership 

205 



Annals of the 

with Henry Van Brunt (H. C. 1854) and together they de- 
signed Memorial Hall, the Ether Monument in the Boston 
Public Garden, the First Church in Boston, the Union Sta- 
tion at Worcester, and many other notable buildings. 

In 1865, on the establishment of a professorship in Archi- 
tecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Ware 
was asked to accept the appointment, and after eighteen 
months of preparation in Europe, assumed his new duties. 
He remained at Technology until 1881, resigning to become 
Professor of Architecture at the School of Mines at Columbia, 
an office which he held until 1903. 

He received from Harvard, in 1896, the degree of LL.D., 
as the 

Creator of two serviceable schools of architecture — the first at 
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the second at Colum- 
bia University, the teacher, examplar and friend of a generation 
of American Architects. 

Ware was on the Architectural Committee of the Pan- 
American Exposition and helped to make the plans for the 
new State Capitol at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. 

In 1902, on the twenty-first anniversary of the founding 
of the School of Architecture at Columbia University, a 
banquet was tendered him by his former pupils. Held in 
Vanderbilt Hall of the Fine Arts Building, which was dec- 
orated with the Columbia colors, he was surrounded by his 
friends, and the proposal was then made to raise thirty 
thousand dollars for the support of the School. 

Professor Ware retired with the title of Professor Emeri- 
tus in 1903, making his home for the rest of his life with his 
sister in Milton. 

During his connection with Technology he delivered several 
courses of lectures on Architecture and the Arts at the Low- 
ell Institute, and at Huntington Hall in connection with 
Technology. He published "Architectural Lights and Shad- 
ows" and "Modern Perspective and the American Vignola," 
both of which are widely used as textbooks. 

A member of the Examiner Club since 1863, he was also 
a member of the Alumni Association of the School of Archi- 
tecture, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sci- 
ences, and an Honorary Corresponding member of the Royal 

206 



Harvard Class of 1852 

Institute of British Architects. He was universally recog- 
nized as the Dean of Architecture in this country. 

He died on the ninth of June, 191 5, at Milton. He was 
unmarried. 

WILLIAM HENRY WARING 

A familiar landmark of nineteenth-century Brooklyn, New 
York, was an imposing house, which stood on Washington 
Street and was well-known to all the denizens of the city as 
the "Waring Mansion." A dignified structure, with impos- 
ing colonnades, surrounded by spacious grounds and fair 
gardens, it was the home of Henry Waring, grandfather of 
William Henry Waring of '52, who was himself the fourth 
generation of the name to live in Brooklyn. 1 

William Henry was the son of Nathaniel Ferris and Clara 
Anne (Hackstaff) Waring, and was born in Brooklyn on the 
seventh of February, 183 1. He was sent to boarding-school 
at Chatham, twenty miles from Albany, at the age of six, 
but the harsh treatment of one Mrs. Chase, the wife of the 
principal, induced his parents speedily to remove him from 
what he terms a "Dotheboys Hall," and he subsequently 
attended several schools, finishing his preparatory course for 
Harvard at the Union Academy, Kinderhook, and entering 
College with the Sophomore Class in 1849. 

Popularity awaited him at Cambridge, where he was Re- 
cording Secretary of the Natural History Society, and of the 
Alpha Delta Phi, Librarian of the Hasty Pudding Club, and 
a member of the Institute of 1770. At Commencement, he 
delivered an Oration on James Fenimore Cooper. He and 
Norris were chums, and their intimacy continued as long as 
the latter lived. 

Waring studied Law with the "Quaker firm" of Wetmore 
and Browne, New York, after graduation, and in November 
of 1852 attended a lecture by Professor Felton, which he 
thus describes to "Joe" Choate: 

Attended lecture by Connie Felton at Broadway Tabernacle on 
Wednesday evening. It was on that delightful course, with which 

1 The Waring stable was presided over by an old and faithful servitor, Black Bill, 
whose funeral was attended by almost every private carriage in Brooklyn. "The 
mansion" was used during the Civil War as the headquarters of the Provost Marshal. 

207 



Annals of the 

we were regaled in our Senior year, — that about the woman's 
rights, etc. Of course, the jokes lost none of their savor by repeti- 
tion. At the conclusion of the lecture, Frank Hurd, Perry, Ander- 
son, Norris, Billy Bobby 1 and myself greeted the jolly Professor, 
who inquired felicitously whether the whole Class was present, as 
it would be a good opportunity to have a recitation. As a matter 
of course, we all laughed and thought it a mighty fine joke. I never 
saw the old fogey look so gentle before. His appearance presented 
quite a contrast to what it was when I last saw him in New York 
perambulating Broadway with that old cloak and fir cap with 
which he was wont to deck his symmetrical form in days of yore. 

Deciding rather suddenly, in May of the following year, 
to go to Europe, Waring sailed on the packet ship Under- 
writer, and joining Coolidge, passed a happy twelvemonth 
in foreign travel with him, and for a time with Ex-President 
Van Buren. He returned in June, 1854, an d having been 
admitted to the New York Bar, in January, 1855, proceeded 
to open an office in partnership with Norris, and when the 
firm was dissolved by Norris's enforced journey to the West 
in search of health, Waring formed a connection with Messrs. 
Harrison and Burrall as junior partner. 

On November tenth, 1859, he married Kate Bernard, 
daughter of William H. and Ellen (Engle) Bernard; their 
oldest son, William Bernard Waring, was born on the twenty- 
first of September, i860. In May, 1865, Mr. Waring went 
with his family to Marietta, Ohio, where he remained for a 
year as representative of the interests of New York capi- 
talists engaged in coal-oil speculation. 

While never ceasing the practice of his profession, wherein 
he devoted himself chiefly to chamber practice, Mr. Waring 
took a keen interest in local politics. During his year at the 
Academy at Kinderhook, he became a disciple of his grand- 
father's old friend and political associate, Martin Van Buren, 
and following in his footsteps abjured the faith of his fathers 
and was henceforth a steadfast Republican. None the less 
did he remain loyal throughout his life to his ideal of a true 
Democracy. He advocated zealously free tolls for canals, 
introduced a comprehensive bill for the legalization of primary 
elections and the punishment of fraud thereat, opposed the 
consolidation of Telegraph Conpanies, and put through the 

1 William Robert Ware. 
208 



Harvard Class of 1852 

law exempting Church property from taxation. Of the hun- 
dreds who went to his house at the time of his death, many 
were the working people whom he had helped and befriended. 

He always declined office, however, until 1877, when, be- 
ing unanimously tendered the nomination of Republican 
Representative to the New York Assembly, he accepted the 
offer, was elected, and again filled the office in 188 1. 

During the last year of his life he was approached in re- 
gard to important positions both legal and diplomatic, and 
there is no doubt that had longer life been granted him, his 
disinterested public service would have met the honor and 
recognition it deserved. His death was caused by over- 
exertion, in addressing an assemblage of Veterans in another 
part of the State during a political campaign. 

The extent of his influence, and the respect and affection 
in which he was held, were shown by the great numbers who 
thronged the Church at his funeral, and the masses of flowers 
sent by political opponents as well as friends, for, as was 
truthfully said in the "Resolves" of the Lincoln Club, "His 
generous nature had no room in which to harbor resentments, 
and the foe of today became the comrade and friend on the 
morrow." 

We have not space here to do justice to Mr. Waring's 
charming and lovable character, nor the breadth of sympa- 
thies, interests and pursuits, which, together with his courtesy 
and love of the Fine Arts, made him so delightful a com- 
panion. 

In 1882 he again visited Europe, 1 regretting that thereby 
he was prevented from attending the thirtieth anniversary 
of his Class. His love for College days never flagged, al- 
though he was infrequently able to take part in the gather- 
ings, and his daughter sends us this pretty picture : 

My earliest recollection of my father is having him in our nursery 
with two or three children on his knee, while he sang to us the songs 
of the Hasty Pudding Club and told us about his College friends. 

An agreeable speaker, he was a popular lecturer, his favor- 
ite subject being Abraham Lincoln. 

His chief recreation was historical reading; he especially 

1 Mr. Waring was one of the early tourists to visit Herculaneum and Pompeii 
after the excavations. 

209 



Annals of the 

enjoyed the study of American statesmen, as well as the 
history of Greece and Rome, and his love of classical lore led 
him to delight in following the courses of his daughter 1 in 
Greek and Latin, while she was preparing to enter Smith 
College. 

Mr. Waring was a member of the Society of Old Brook- 
lynites, the New England Society, the Lincoln, Oxford and 
other Clubs, counsel for the Sheltering Arms Nursery, mem- 
ber of the Board of Managers of the Church Charity Found- 
ation, counsel of the Franklin Bank of New York, one of the 
originators of the Long Island Historical Society and of the 
Union League, and Director of the Brooklyn Choral Society, 
as well as Past Master of the Montauk Lodge. 

William Bernard Waring, the oldest son, was for a time 
at Harvard, in the Class of 1882; he graduated from the 
Columbia Law School in 1887 and died on the twelfth of 
November, 1908; Mr. Waring had eight other children: 
James Duncan, born, 1861; Henry Ferris, born, 1863; Clara, 
born, 1865; Horace Coolidge, born, 1867, died in the follow- 
ing year; Alary Kimberley (graduated Smith College, 1893); 
John Hallock (at Cornell University for two years) ; Charlotte 
Hackstaff ; and Wallace Catlin Waring. 

Mrs. Waring died on the fourteenth of August, 1876, and 
Mr. Waring married (2) 27 November, 1877, Anna Mary 
Leeds, daughter of James F. and Mary (Wood) Leeds, who 
survives him. She had no children. 

He died on the tenth of February, 1890. 2 

ANDREW WASHBURN 

Andrew Washburn was the son of Joshua and Sylvia (Mos- 
man) Washburn, and was born on the twenty-third day of 
August, 1830 at Auburndale, Massachusetts, where he pre- 
pared for College. Entering Aiiddlebury College, Vermont, 
and, having taken the prize scholarship, he repaired to Har- 
vard in October, 1851 as a member of the Senior Class. At 
Commencement he delivered a Disquisition on "Raymond 
Tully the Crusader and Alchemist." 

1 Miss Man- Kimberley Waring, now Principal of The Kimberley School, Mont- 
clair, New Jersey. 

2 Obituary notices of Mr. Waring appeared in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle of II 
February and 13 February, 1890, and in the New York Sun of 12 February, 1890. 

2IO 



Harvard Class of 1852 

Having adopted the career of a teacher, Washburn taught 
for several years in Hancock, Vermont, and Medway Village, 
Massachusetts, and we find among the Class papers the pro- 
spectus of an English and Classical. School for Day and Board- 
ing Scholars at Medway, dated June, 1855; he taught also 
at Walpole, Massachusetts, and in Boston. On May twenty- 
fourth, 1854 he married Eliza Gardner, daughter of James 
and Mary Gardner, of Walpole, their son Gardner being 
born in October, 1857. 

Having been appointed Superintendent of the Massachu- 
setts School for Idiotic and Feebleminded Youth at South 
Boston, Washburn resigned the position in i860 and on July 
fifth, 1 861 he became First Lieutenant and Quartermaster 
of the Fourteenth Massachusetts Volunteers. In January, 
1862 he was Major of the First Massachusetts Heavy Artil- 
lery, and of the Second New York Artillery in February, 
1863, serving until discharged for disability in April of the 
same year. He recovered sufficiently to be employed at 
the United States Arsenal at Watertown, and resigning in 
October, 1865 received the appointment of Inspector of 
Schools for the State of Virginia, under the Bureau of Freed- 
men, etc. 

While at Richmond Major Washburn, with the help of 
his wife, successfully established the first system of Free 
Schools, and he was for five years President of the Richmond 
State Normal School, which he and Dr. Sears, the agent of 
the Peabody Fund, together founded. Major Washburn had 
espoused the Anti-Slavery cause, in the days when interest 
in the negroes was attended with personal peril, and Mrs. 
Washburn often waited in fear for her husband's return from 
meetings not infrequently the scene of more or less disturb- 
ance. It was therefore a great gratification to one of his 
convictions to help in the education of the slaves, and Major 
Washburn remained in the South until the close of the Freed- 
men's Bureau, coming North in the early seventies after 
serving for two years as Pension Agent. 

Making his home in Hyde Park during his last years, he 
was interested in granite cutting, Treasurer of the Walpole 
Hair and Bedding Company, and Director and Vice-President 
of the New York Refining Company. He was a member of 
several Masonic orders, and in politics was a staunch Repub- 

211 



Annals of the 

lican; he was at one time Superintendent of Schools at Hyde 
Park, and Chairman of the School Board. 

In 1904 Major and Mrs. Washburn celebrated their fifti- 
eth wedding anniversary, receiving many gifts, of which the 
most prized was a hall clock from Major Washburn's former 
pupils. They had six children, Gardner and Mary being the 
only ones to survive their parents. Major Washburn died 
on the twenty-eighth of September, 1908. 

His name should always be remembered as that of the 
originator of Memorial Day. In the Spring of 1866 he and 
his family were at Richmond, surrounded by battlefields and 
the lonely, often nameless, graves of those who had fallen in 
the Civil War. With the early Southern Spring came the 
first wild flowers to cover the ominous mounds and, as if 
"out from the heart of Nature" herself, a general impulse 
arose to close the schools on May Day and devote it to 
decorating the soldiers' graves. Children, black and white, 
brought loads of flowers to Mrs. Washburn's kitchen, where 
willing hands fashioned them into wreaths, nosegays and a 
large cross, which was placed in the center of the graves at 
Belle Isle, one of the most dreadful Southern prisons. Al- 
though the morning was threatening, with a dripping mist, 
the little band of flower bearers set forth, and before leaving 
the graves joined in singing "There is rest for the weary" 
and as they sang, the clouds parted, and a ray of sunshine 
fell upon the Cross. In the afternoon they decorated Holly- 
wood Cemetery, where was one Confederate grave. At first 
they passed it by, feeling it beyond the limit of their charity; 
they even left the cemetery; but turned back, and the dead 
Rebel, too, slept under a pall of flowers. 1 

WILLIAM FISKE WHEELER 

William Fiske Wheeler was the son of William Augustus 
and Almira Warner (Allen) Wheeler, and was born in Brook- 
field on the twenty-fourth of June, 1830. A year later his 
parents moved to Worcester, where William prepared for Col- 
lege at the Worcester Classical and English High School. 
He was a member of the Harvard Lodge of the Independent 

1 From "The First Decoration Day" by Major Washburn in the Boston Com- 
monwealth of 25 May, 1895. 

212 



Harvard Class of 1852 

Order of Odd Fellows; of the Harvard Natural History So- 
ciety, and of the Institute of 1770. 

He sailed for Europe in the December of 1852 and on his 
return, married, on the thirteenth of September, 1854, Ada- 
line Berry Young, daughter of Calvin and Adaline (Berry) 
Young of Jamaica Plain, born on March thirtieth, 1834 m 
Boston; he immediately established himself on a farm in 
Grafton, where, in 1858, he opened a private school for boys 
in his own house. 

On the breaking out of the war, he was commissioned 
Captain of the Fifty-first Massachusetts Volunteer Militia, 
on September first, 1862, and was mustered out on July 
twenty-seventh, 1863. 

He lived at different times in North Attleborough and 
Dorchester, Massachusetts, Philadelphia and Los Angeles, 
and was the first President of Chaffey College, Ontario, Cal- 
ifornia. He embarked in various enterprises, but his health 
had been hopelessly shattered by his exposure during the war, 
and through no fault of his own his experiments were not 
crowned with success. 

He married a second time on July twenty-second, 1886, 
Clara M. Blunt, daughter of James F. Blunt, who was born 
in Mount Auburn, Maine, on July twenty-ninth, 1855. 

His second son died in childhood, and his youngest in 
young manhood; his two surviving children were Frank Allen 
Wheeler, born 29 September, 1859, and Ada Maria Wheeler, 
born 14 November, 1865. They were all the children of his 
first marriage. 

Mr. Wheeler died at Los Angeles, California, on the twen- 
tieth of September, 1907. 

HORATIO HANCOCK FISKE WHITTEMORE 

Horatio Whittemore was the son of Gershom and Caroline 
(Tufts) Whittemore, and was born in West Cambridge on 
February fifteenth, 1830. He prepared for college at Phillips 
Academy, Andover, in company with Sturgis and W. R. 
Ware, and with them came to Cambridge. In College he be- 
longed to the Harvard Natural History Society, played the 
flute, octave and horn in the Pierian Sodality, being also 
Secretary in 1850 and '51, and Vice-President during 185 1, '52 

213 



Annals of the 

and '53, and was one of the ten members of the Knights' Punch 
Bowl. 

At the Class Supper he wrote down "Medicine" as his 
future profession, and began to study immediately, first with 
Dr. Wellington of West Cambridge, later with Dr. Clark, 1 
City Physician of Boston, and finally with Dr. Davis 2 at the 
Marine Hospital at Chelsea. Graduating in 1855 at the 
Commencement of the Harvard Medical School, he sailed in 
the same year for Europe as surgeon in the ship Cathedral, 
and passed some months in the hospitals of the Continent. 
On his return, Whittemore was assistant to Dr. Davis for a 
short time at the Marine Hospital, but in November, 1855 
he decided to follow the advice of a friend and settle in 
Marblehead, which was thenceforth his home. One of Sted- 
man's most spirited drawings in the Knights' Punch Bowl 
record book is entitled "Fancy Sketch of Dr. Whittemore's 
Labours," and depicts the disciple of Galen essaying to 
steer a cat boat in a heavy sea, and hailed meanwhile 
by a voice from a near-by fishing schooner: "Stop at the 
schooner when you come back, Doctor, pay you in herrings 
next voyage." 

On the fifth of June, 1856 Dr. Whittemore married Evelyn 
H. Pratt, daughter of William W. and Mary (Adams) Pratt 
of Worcester. 

During the Civil War he was examining and post Surgeon, 
and Medical Examiner at the garrisons of Forts Sewall, 
Glover, and Miller, and when the call came for surgeons after 
the terrible and bloody battle of the Wilderness he at once 
volunteered his aid. 

As a physician and surgeon, Dr. Whittemore was skilful, 
tender and humane. He inherited from his grandfather, 
Amos Whittemore, who was noted for his ingenuity, remark- 
able dexterity in the use of tools, and in his house was a 
room fitted up as a workshop where he kept all his pro- 
fessional implements in order, often especially adapting those 
which he needed for certain operations and could not other- 
wise procure. Genial and buoyant, and possessed of mag- 
netism of manner, his mere presence in the sick chamber 
brought help and solace to both patient and anxious watcher. 

1 Henry Grafton Clark, Bowdoin, mi 834. 

2 Charles Augustine Davis, H. C. ^1848. 

214 



PLATE XVII 








WH ITTEMORE 



WILLIAMSON 



Wl LLIAMS 



Wl LLARD 
WRIGHT 



Harvard Class of 1852 

His ingenuity served him in good stead in adapting needed 
appliances and he performed many successful operations, 
while he never refused to answer any call for help even dur- 
ing his last year, when his life was ebbing fast. As was said 
of another physician over a hundred years ago, 

When fainting nature called for aid, 
And hovering death prepared the blow, 
His vigorous remedy displayed 
The power of art without the show. 

In misery's darkest cavern known, 
His useful care was ever nigh, 
Where hopeless anguish poured his groan, 
And lonely want retired to die. 

Foremost in every effort for improvement in the fisher 
community of his adoption, Dr. Whittemore was a prom- 
inent member of the Masonic Lodge, and filled several Town 
offices, besides being Trustee of the Savings Bank, the Acad- 
emy Fund, the Unitarian Church, and President of the Musi- 
cal Association. It was evident during his last year that his 
health was failing and he told a friend that only a sea voyage 
and consequent entire rest could save him, but his energy 
and vitality rose above his mortal weakness, and to the end 
he was as he had ever been, ready to help, courteous and 
genial, brave and industrious, generous and kind. 

He died on the twenty-fifth of November, 1872 at Marble- 
head, deeply mourned by all who knew him. Mrs. Whitte- 
more outlived her husband, with their two children, Mary 
Caroline, born 15 December, 1859, and Edward Horatio 
Whittemore, born in 1861. 



SIDNEY WILLARD 

Grandson of President Joseph Willard of Harvard College, 
Sidney Willard was born at Lancaster, Massachusetts, on 
the third of February, 183 1. His father was Joseph Willard 
(H. C. 1816) and his mother Susannah Hickling Lewis. His 
parents moved to Boston while Sidney was a baby, and his 
boyhood associations were therefore all connected with "the 

215 



Annals of the 

little town on hilltops three" where, from the age of ten until 
his entrance at Harvard, his education was conducted at the 
Boston Latin School. Endowed with great muscular strength, 
he carried off the palm as Class Athlete, and pulled the heav- 
iest oar in the first of the Harvard- Yale boat races, which 
took place on Lake Winnipiseogee. 

Long before his graduation Willard had decided upon his 
profession, and therefore he immediately entered the Dane 
Law School; at the end of six months he repaired to Charles- 
town, New Hampshire, where he combined school-teaching 
with the pursuit of his legal studies in the office of the Hon. 
Edmund Lambert Cushing (H. C. 1827), 1 returning to Boston 
in 1854. His physical strength stood him in good stead, for 
during the next two years, while continuing his preparation 
for the Law in the office of the Hon. Charles Greeley Loring 
(H. C. 1812), he was also for a time an inmate of the house- 
hold of the Hon. Jonathan Phillips (H. C. &1818), a position 
which entailed much night watching in the shape of reading 
aloud to the old gentleman during the small hours. Mr. 
Rantoul declined the offer of successorship to Willard as in- 
volving too great a strain, but Willard's stalwart physique 
passed through it with unimpaired vigor. 2 

Three months after his admission to the Suffolk Bar, Wil- 
lard visited Saint Paul with a view of establishing himself 
there, but "the West," as it was then called, did not appeal 
to him, and coming back to Boston, he opened an office on 
Court Street, which he shared for a time with his classmate 
Denny, meanwhile supplementing the "Law's delay" in the 
way of clients, by private tutoring. 

Willard never allowed his many interests and avocations 
to crowd from his life the physical exercise which he loved, 
and in i860, having had a wherry specially built from a model 
of his own in order that the little craft might be used with 
safety on the open ocean, he embarked with the intention of 
rowing from Boston to Mount Desert. A severe easterly 
storm forced him to put back after reaching the Isles of 
Shoals, but he recorded his experiences in a sketch called "A 
Night in a Wherry," which was published in the Atlantic 
Monthly. 

1 Afterward Chief- Justice of New Hampshire. 

2 Personal Recollections by Robert S. Rantoul (H. C. 1853). 

2l6 



Harvard Class of 1852 

1 86 1, that fateful year when war was declared, found Wil- 
lard established in his profession, and engaged to be married. 
Alas! that 

Oft expectation fails, and most oft there 
Where most it promises. 

for to one of his lofty purpose and conscientious nature the 
call of his Country came as a summons from on High. 

Since 1858 he had been a member of the Boston Cadets, 
and had long planned a system of more efficient and disci- 
plined drill which should render the comparatively untrained 
Militia fit for active service, and before war was really ap- 
prehended he had already begun, in the December of i860, 
the drilling of a Club formed of the younger members of the 
Bar. During the early months after war was upon us he re- 
mained at home, giving much of his time as drill-master, an 
office wherein he was unsurpassed, but with the summer days 
of 1 86 1, — long with disappointment and despair, he knew 
his time to go had come, and applied for a commission. 
Three days later, on the thirteenth of August, having raised 
the necessary number of men, he was appointed Captain in 
the Thirty-fifth Regiment, and on the twenty-first, the day 
before his departure for the front, he was married to Sarah 
Ripley Fiske, daughter of Andrew Henry Fiske, Esq. (H. C. 
1825) of Weston, Massachusetts. 

His commission as Major of the Regiment reached Willard 
at the camp at Arlington Heights in September; thence, and 
from other posts, he wrote frequent letters home, regretting 
that while his Regiment was hurried into action, taking part 
in two severe battles before it was five weeks old, he was de- 
barred from being with them, having been sent to Washing- 
ton on detached service. He assumed command on the 
twenty-eighth of September, and gave himself untiringly to 
perfecting drill and discipline, wishing only that "Uncle Sam 
would allow his Majors to walk . . . Nature never intended 
me for a horseman, I hate the beasts." 

He felt no fear, when for the first time, in early November, 
he found himself under fire; he wrote home cheerful Thanks- 
giving greetings, and to his father, on the second of Decem- 
ber, a letter too pregnant with a son's loving gratitude and 
with modest self-knowledge not to be printed once again. 

217 



Annals of the 

I hardly think I can make you a fitting return for all your af- 
fectionate and Christian care of me, or all your patient and loving 
waiting during my slow struggle to work my way in life and gain 
a place among men. I hope, if my life is spared to return, and with 
increased knowledge of men, with an experience in rough, practical 
life of the greatest value to me, and habit of prompt decision, with 
the attrition of a life as open and public as my former one was se- 
cluded and fastidious, to make my fortunes more rapidly than 
earlier years foreboded. 

But ten days more of life on earth were to be his. On De- 
cember thirteenth, as the Regiment, having left Fredericks- 
burg at half-past eleven o'clock on Saturday morning, was 
advancing against the Rebels, the Major, in front of Color- 
company B, ordered the charge. 

Waving his sword and leading on his men, he was seen to 
fall, and there arose the cry "The Major is down!" Capt. 
Lathrop x and a private succeeded in removing him beyond 
the range of fire, and with the knowledge that the hand of 
death was upon him, he sent messages to those at home, end- 
ing with "But God's will be done. Tell them I tried to do 
my duty to my Country and to the Regiment." He lived 
until the following morning, December fourteenth, 1862, the 
first of the Class of '52 to die for the Union. 

"The Christian Athlete Willard," his classmate Bradlee 
wrote at the Commencement after his death, "with the Heart 
of a Lamb, but having the strength of the Lion"; and in the 
Resolutions of the Class, Thayer closes the record of a noble 
life: 

But it is consoling to remember that he died nobly, — in battle, 
— for his Country, — at the head of his Regiment, and that he has 
added fresh honor to a name distinguished in the annals of New 
England and of our College, in more than one generation. 

He was the first of our number to lay down his life for the Coun- 
try, and his name shall be treasured up in our hearts with ever- 
lasting respect and honor. 

He was one with whose memory nothing which is not truthful 
and pure and upright and courageous and honorable can ever be 
associated. 

We remember that our friend entered the service from a convic- 
tion of duty and an honorable sensitiveness (countervailing the ad- 

1 John Lathrop — Harvard Law School 1855, afterward a Justice of the Supreme 
Judicial Court of Massachusetts. 

218 






Harvard Class of 1852 

vice of friends) which led him to think that one so well qualified 
as he ought not to be absent from the field; and we remember also 
the costly sacrifices which he then made, of domestic happiness, of 
business prospects and of strong natural tastes and predilections 
for peaceful pursuits. 

Many of us mourn the loss of a personal friend, generous, in- 
corruptible, steadfast, pure, of a strong and widely-cultivated mind, 
and a heart singularly affectionate and sensitive to every senti- 
ment of honor. 

Major Willard's sword is now in the Harvard Club of 
Boston; another sword, presented to him by the Drill Club 
of Weston, has been given to the Loyal Legion. 

We sit here in the Promised Land 
That flows with Freedom's honey and milk; 

But 't was they won it, sword in hand, 
Making the nettle danger soft for us as silk. 

We welcome back our bravest and our best; — 

Ah, me! not all! some come not with the rest 
Who went forth brave and bright as any here! 

I only see the gaps, 
Thinking of dear ones whom the dumb turf wraps, 
Dark to the triumph which they died to gain. 

I with uncovered head 
Salute the sacred dead. 

RUSSELL MORTIMER WILLIAMS 

Russell Mortimer Williams, the son of S. H. and Harriet 
(Delano) Williams, was born in Parkman, Ohio, on the 
twenty-seventh of September, 1830. His father was a mer- 
chant, and had traveled westward from Aurora, New York. 
At the age of sixteen, Russell entered Western Reserve 
College, but was obliged to leave at the end of a term on 
account of ill health. After passing two years in Indiana, he 
returned to College and remained three years, repairing in 
the Senior term, with the four other Western Reserve men, 
to Harvard for their last year of College life. He was a mem- 
ber of the Hudson Chapter of the Alpha Delta Phi. 1 

1 Western Reserve College. 
219 



Annals of the 

In 1852 Williams began to read Law with A. G. Riddler, 
Esquire, but another failure of health obliged him to give up 
the study, and in 1854 he went to Kansas, where he settled 
in White Cloud, Doniphan County. Writing from there to 
the Class Secretary he says : 

Was engaged for four years in merchandizing, trading with Indians, 
locating towns, dabbling in land and fighting Missourians, winding 
up this period by mingling in politics and going to the Legisla- 
ture, of which last fact I trust I have sufficiently repented. 

From that time until the war broke out my pursuits were vari- 
ous, — collecting, trading on the Plains, dealing in land, stock, etc. 
In '61 I went east to join the Army, but before doing so changed 
base and entered the Navy. Served about two years in the Missis- 
sippi Squadron under Admiral Porter as Acting Ensign, and then 
was obliged to leave on account of ill health. While at home on 
sick leave, in September '63, was married (or rather at my mother's 
home in Ohio) and after leaving the service came back here with 
my family and shall doubtless remain here for some years to come. 
Have one child, — a son four years old; am pleasantly located in 
a small but busy place and should be very glad at any time to wel- 
come you or any others of the Class of '52. 

My remembrances of Harvard are all pleasant ones, and I hope 
soon to be able to attend one of the Class gatherings there, but 
my life has so far been a busy one, and exactly the right time has 
not yet come. But until I do have the pleasure of again visiting 
the old scenes, every part of which is fresh in my memory, let me 
assure you, and through you, any other members of the Class you 
may meet of my warm personal regard not only for yourself but 
for them, and of the lively remembrance that I have of each and 
all with whom I was so pleasantly connected. 

In 1860-1861 Williams was a member of the Kansas Ter- 
ritorial Legislature, and in 1 862-1 864 he was in the Kansas 
Senate. 

He married, as he writes, on the eighth of September, 
1863, Sophia Harriet Pitner, daughter of William Pitner of 
Parkman, Ohio. They had two children, Halbert Hudson 
Williams, born 29 September, 1864, a merchant and importer 
in Chicago; and Kathryn Leslie Williams, born 13 November, 
1872. 

During his last years Mr. Williams practised law. He 
died at Hastings, Nebraska, on the fourteenth of May, 1893, 
whither he had gone to be operated on for cancer. 

220 



Harvard Class of 1852 

Mrs. Williams who survived him with the son and daugh- 
ter, writes that 

his chief characteristics were an unusual geniality of disposition, 
strict business principles and an open hand for any poor or suffer- 
ing human being. Generous to a fault, a kind and loving husband 
and father, a true friend, he lives in the memory of those who knew 
him best. 

Her words are corroborated by the impression given in his 
letters, of open heartedness and loyalty, and his eagerness to 
contribute to the full extent of his powers to any cause con- 
nected with Harvard. 



WILLIAM CROSS WILLIAMSON 

"Your dear father was the most popular man in College, as 
he was one of the dearest of men," Joe Choate wrote Bill 
Williamson's daughter but a few weeks before he himself 
crossed the river, — wider and deeper than the Charles of 
their College days, to that farther shore, where a goodly 
number of the old Class awaited him. 

Certain it is that Williamson always regarded the accident 
which made him a member of '52 instead of 1851 as one of 
the most fortunate of his life. 

William Cross Williamson was the son of the Honor- 
able Joseph x and Caroline (Cross) Williamson, and was born 
in Belfast, Maine, on the thirty-first of January, 1831. He 
studied with the Reverend George Field of Belfast, who was 
accustomed to fit boys for the Bowdoin College examina- 
tions, and as William found himself therefore insufficiently 
prepared in some of the requirements for the Harvard curri- 
culum, he passed the winter of 1847-8 in the family of Henry 
B. Wheelwright (H. C. 1844) of Roxbury, Massachusetts, 
making up in the desired branches. 

A member of the Odd Fellows, Natural History, Alpha 
Delta Phi, and Iadma Societies, and the Hasty Pudding Club, 
being Poet and Secretary of the latter, Williamson was also 
one of the founders of the Knights Punch Bowl and belonged 
to the Institute of 1770 and the Pierian Sodality, where he 
played the violin. He was in the Chapel Choir and fifty 

1 University of Vermont 1812; afterward President of the Maine Senate. 

221 



Annals of the 

years after, one of the Class of '55 told the writer that he 
should never forget the beauty of Williamson's face as he 
used to watch it during the singing of the hymns at the 
Chapel service. 

In the Senior year Thayer and Williamson chummed to- 
gether, making two of the East Entry boys in Holworthy, 
who formed an inner circle of especially congenial spirits. 
Williamson was Class Poet, but the Poem was read by Joe 
Choate, for just before the day which was to have been the 
proudest he had known, he was called home by the sudden 
death of his mother, who had died while on her way to the 
Cambridge Class Day. She was his dearest friend, and her 
loss was a life-long sorrow. Williamson's part at Commence- 
ment was a Poem on the Death of Moore. He received the 
First Boylston Prize for Elocution at the end of the Junior 
year. 

The winter of 1853 was passed as Tutor in the family of 
John Appleton Haven (H. C. 1813) at Fort Washington on 
the Hudson, near enough to New York for him to see much 
of "Billy Bobby," who was also tutoring, and of Norris, 
Waring and Hurd, who were all three studying Law. Some- 
what divided in his choice between the Law and the Gospel, 
Williamson inclined for a time to the latter profession, his 
recent sorrow influencing him perhaps to dwell on serious 
things, for he came of a family of lawyers. The young men 
of those days wrote more freely of their inmost thoughts and 
feelings than is the fashion in these telephonic times, and it 
is interesting and beautiful to see the deep religious feeling 
which underlay their merry jests. Having arrived at his de- 
cision, Williamson studied at home for some time before re- 
pairing to the Dane Law School, from which he graduated 
in 1855, being admitted to the Suffolk Bar in 1856. Entering 
the office of Elias Hasket Derby (H. C. 1824) he became his 
Junior partner, and after Mr. Derby retired from practice, 
formed the firm of Williamson and Derby, with Mr. Derby's 
son, George Strong Derby (Harvard Law School 1861). 

Contributing articles and poems to various magazines, Mr. 
Williamson was also often asked to lecture for the Lyceum 
courses of the day, and was interested in politics, being Presi- 
dent of the Young Men's Democratic Club of Boston, and a 
member of the Common Council; a speech by him at Faneuil 

222 



Harvard Class of 1852 

Hall was regarded as an important occasion by his Class- 
mates. In 1 861 he was appointed Commissioner in Insol- 
vency. He belonged to several musical societies, and took 
part in private theatricals, which had been a favorite pas- 
time of his from early boyhood, while his appointment of 
Milk Inspector to the City of Boston was the occasion of his 
giving a supper to the Knights' Punch Bowl, where some- 
thing stronger than the lacteal beverage was served. 

In the spring of 1859 his classmate Hurd insisted on his 
meeting a girl with the most "wonderful complexion ever 
seen," who was visiting common friends. It was a case of 
love at first sight, although the romance did not culminate 
until 1863, when he married, on April twenty-ninth, Sarah 
Howland, daughter of Benjamin Tucker Ricketson of New 
Bedford. The Knights' Punch Bowl of course found cause 
for merriment in the subjugation of another member, and 
flung many jibes at the "Belfast Giant" whose hebdomadal 
visits to his fiancee's home deprived them of much of his 
company. 

After the death of his partner, George Derby, Mr. William- 
son withdrew almost wholly from court practice, in which 
he had been very successful, and devoted himself to con- 
veyancing and the care of trust estates. 

He was a principal founder and counsel for the North End 
Savings Bank; in 1890 he was one of the Commissioners on 
the Publication of the Province Laws; and from 1878 to 1888 
he served on the Boston School Committee of which he was 
at one time President; but he had no wish for public office. 
He even refused to think of the appointment to the Probate 
Bench which his friends were anxious for him to consider. 

Mr. Williamson's tastes were essentially those of a scholar, 
and he loved to pass his hours of leisure in the study of the 
literature of his own and other tongues. Germany cast her 
spell upon his earlier years, as was the case with many of his 
generation when Longfellow's poems and translations carried 
the world by storm, but with middle life he turned to the 
Classic authors, and was a true disciple of Horace, translat- 
ing many of his poems and leaving notes on the allusions, 
plagiarisms and quotations from the poet in English and Ger- 
man from very early times to the present day. In 1901 he 
was elected an honorary member of Phi Beta Kappa in recog- 

223 



Annals of the 

nition of his erudition as one of the first Horatian scholars in 
the country. 

While in no wise a recluse, it became increasingly difficult 
to lure Mr. Williamson from his own fireside, where, sur- 
rounded by the books he loved, and with a companionship 
which met his every need, he found time all too short. The 
associations with his Alma Mater, however, were always 
precious to him; he was a Director of the Harvard Club of 
Boston, which was founded in 1855, but which lived only a 
short time; and wrote a poem for the Twenty-fifth anni- 
versary of his Class; and he found great pleasure in the oc- 
tarchian '52 Dining Club of which he was a member. 

His beautiful collection of different editions of Horace, 
many of them of great age and value, was bequeathed by 
Mrs. Williamson, to the Harvard College Library. 

The death of Thayer, in 1898, was a grief to his chum, and 
in answer to Thorndike's appeal, — "Dear Bill, There is one 
thing you can do for Jim," he wrote for the Memorial Meet- 
ing of The Colonial Society the Sonnet, — his swan song, 
which is given in the sketch of Mr. Thayer. 

Unfitting is it to speak here of his personal beauty, or of 
the rare charm which inspired in his family and the men 
friends who loved him a peculiar tenderness and admiration. 
Retiring, modest, always gentle, although immovable in any 
question of principle, Mr. Williamson could never have been 
made to realize the weight which a word from him carried, 
nor the deep influence exerted over those who came in con- 
tact with a man like him, whose watchword might have been 
" Altiora peto." "Your uncle was one of the men to whom I 
always liked to take off my hat," said one of the Class of 
1876 to his nephew within the last year; "I never talked with 
him without learning something worth while." "This above 
all," as Shakspere speaks through old Polonius, 

to thine own self be true, 
And it must follow, as the night the day, 
Thou canst not then be false to any man; 

and true to the end was Mr. Williamson. 

The death of his two brothers within three months of one 
another, the elder of whom was also his constant correspon- 
dent and "own familiar friend," was a great shock to Mr. 

224 



Harvard Class of 1852 

Williamson, who was himself already in delicate health. 
During the last winter of his life he wrote for the New Eng- 
land Historical and Genealogical Register a Memoir of his 
brother the Hon. Joseph Williamson (Bowdoin 1849). 

He died, after a short illness at his summer home at Weston, 
Massachusetts, on the third of June, 1903. 

The wisest man can ask no more of Fate 
Than to be simple, modest, manly, true, 
Safe from the Many, honored by the Few; 
Nothing to court in world, or Church, or State; 
But inwardly, in secret, to be great; 

Mr. Williamson was survived by his wife, who died on the 
twelfth of January, 1916, and by his only child, Grace, the 
wife of Henry Herbert Edes (H. C. A 1906). 

He was a member of the Union, Saint Botolph and Examiner 
Clubs, the Harvard Musical Association, and The Colonial 
Society of Massachusetts. 1 

CHAUNCEY WRIGHT 

I was born . . . near the autumnal equinox, just as the sun was 
about to enter the Balance. To this circumstance and to my 
equable temperament I ascribe the subsequent monotony of my life. 
My father, Ansel Wright, is doubtless himself descended from a 
series of English Wrights, who in their day and generation were 
well known to their friends. 

My memory of the earliest events of my life is nearly uniform; 
but, as years advanced, a few salient events stand as landmarks, 
with no particular propriety that I can discover, except perhaps 
the fact that they happened at moments in my life when I was 
unusually conscious, and serve to indicate this state of mind. 

The baby on which I was founded was, I suppose, like other 
babies, except in respect to its destiny, of which, however, its friends 
knew nothing at this time. At an early period of its life its grand- 
mother discovered on its head, which was born without hair, a 
light down from which she predicted the present color of my hair. 
(It was red!) 

This child, though unusually sober and goodnatured, was in 
no way remarkable, except at the time, as being the baby, but this 
I have observed is ever a source of wonder. I bear at the present 

1 A Memoir of Mr. Williamson is in the Publications of The Colonial Society of 
Massachusetts, xix. 34-45. 

225 



Annals of the 

moment upon my forehead, the mark of a wound which the child 
received on its first attempt at walking, and by which, among other 
features, I was afterwards distinguished. My father was a Demo- 
crat, and an ardent supporter of Andrew Jackson, then President, 
and I escaped only by the skin of my teeth (not then grown) from 
receiving the name of this statesman. Fortunately, the Fates and 
my mother interfered, and gave to this infant the name I now bear. 

The first day at the Infant School I distinctly remember as one 
of the saddest in my early life, — a day of grief, inconsolable. My 
teacher, or the lady who I suppose afterwards became my teacher, 
endeavored to comfort me by offering me something to drink, zvhat 
I do not distinctly remember. It may have been milk or some 
sweet beverage. My fainting spirit' with all its tender rootlets, 
rudely torn from home, could find no sustenance in earthly fluids; 
and so I came to my letters in tears. 

From the earliest period of my conscious life, I have shrunk from 
everything of a startling or dramatic character. I was never re- 
markable at any kind of sport. I was indisposed to active exercise, 
to any kind of excitement, or change. I was, in general, a very 
tractable boy, and never was flogged at school, though I remember 
some slight corrections. I had some little ambitions, such as all 
boys have, but they were for the most part of a solitary nature. I 
never aspired to be a leader among boys, and never cared for their 
quarrels and parties. If I aspired to a place, it was to a solitary 
place, and a peculiar one, not within the general aim of boys. At 
one time my ambition took a social turn. W hile I was still in the 
district school I conceived an ardent attachment for one of the 
school-girls, which I have never mentioned before this writing to 
any living soul. I did not even intimate it to the young lady her- 
self, but rather built small castles, or very diminutive houses in the 
air, wherein I dwelt in fancy with her I fancied — I will not say 
adored. Such was the character of all the attachments or fancies 
I have subsequently had. 

Another social turn of my ambition was at the High School, 
where I studied hard for one of a series of prizes. I obtained one, 
not the first of the series, but the first and last in my past life. I 
carried to this school and retained the character of a good boy, 
who had received in that term of the school no marks for tardiness 
or bad behavior. This virtue of punctuality I have since lost in 
College, principally in the Senior year, in which I received two 
private Admonitions for cutting prayers. In this respect, then, the 
boy was not father to the man; though I think this can be explained, 
when we consider that I was not tempted like other boys by their 
sports, and that I was carefully trained to punctuality at home. 

226 



Harvard Class of 1852 

Tardiness is the natural result of an indolent disposition, and this 
I have always had. I had in my boyhood a violent temper; but I 
was not quarrelsome, nor did I ever cultivate pugnacious qualities. 
My indolence has since completely mastered my temper. 

The story of Chauncey Wright's childhood, as written by him- 
self in the Class Book, shows his quaint humor, trend of mind, 
and habit of analysis; it is therefore given almost intact. 

His mother was Elizabeth Boleyn, 1 and he was born in 
Northampton, Massachusetts, on the twentieth of September, 
1830. 

The influence of his friend James Bradley Thayer led him 
to desire a College education. Together they attended the 
Northampton High School, where, under the wise tuition of 
David S. Sheldon (later Professor at Griswold College, Dav- 
enport, Iowa), 2 Chauncey developed mentally, and, taught by 
him to love and study the phenomena of Nature, acquired 
a taste for astronomy, of which, however, he afterward wea- 
ried. He was sent for four months to Williston Seminary, 
Easthampton, to prepare for College. At Harvard he soon 
showed his pre-eminence in all that pertained to the physical 
sciences, while Latin and Greek inspired him with real dis- 
tress; but everyone realized that his was unusual ability. 

He belonged to the Harvard Natural History and Rumford 
Societies, and was elected an Honorary Member of the Hasty 
Pudding Club after graduation. His part at Commencement 
was a Disquisition on "Ancient Geometry"; he was unable 
to deliver it on account of an accident which prevented his 
walking. The Class jack-knife 3 was awarded him, a most 
unjust distinction, says his classmate Professor Thayer, al- 
though he had not then the fine presence and nobility of 
bearing which characterized his later years. In complying 
with the Class Secretary's request for a photograph, in 1865, 
he wrote 

I send enclosed a photograph for the archives. It is not far from 
the truth, and is on the side of honesty. Of all our relatives, those 
from whom we can best endure flattery are our pictures, but I am 
of so honest a race that even my photograph won't lie, — at least 
in my favour. 

1 The name is also spelled Bullen. 

2 David Sylvester Sheldon, Middlebury, 183 1. 

3 Awarded to the homeliest man in the Class. 

227 



Annals of the 

He was so retiring and so little self-asserting that it was long 
before he was found out [wrote his chum Fisher]; we used to think 
he was irregular in his way of studying. But the fact is he was 
always studying without going through the usual forms and appear- 
ances of it. The commonest occasions and incidents always set 
him thinking and philosophizing. . . . He was always warmly wel- 
comed wherever he came. The idea of ever seeing too much of 
Chauncey Wright never entered the head of anybody. If his host 
were occupied for the moment, Chauncey had a way of sitting 
quietly, musing, or reading what happened to be handy, always 
carrying away something from it. He never seemed tired or sleepy, 
except in the mornings about prayer time. Of course, it was well 
understood by the time we graduated that he had remarkable tal- 
ents. When we left College, there was no one more respected or 
better liked. He was, I believe, literally without any unfriendly 
antagonisms of the slightest kind. His gentleness, good humor, 
kindliness, self-forgetfulness, were as universally recognized as his 
thinking power. 

Another classmate, Cheever, thus recalls him: 

He was one of the most charming and genial of companions, and 
of wonderful conversational powers; this was mostly in the form of 
philosophical or speculative soliloquy. Many nights we spent 
listening to him until one or two in the morning. We planned to 
start him by irritative or skeptical remarks; and he would run like 
a good clock. He was, in talk, like what we read of Coleridge, 
De Quincy and Hamilton. He was shy as a hermit crab; and the 
entrance of one not in the set would send him to his hole for the 
rest of the evening. 

Addison Brown said of him: 

Whatever he said or did, it seemed but the surface only of a 
great deep beyond. It was the sense of reserved power in him 
which gave one the idea of greatness. His gentleness and sweet- 
ness of nature seem to me almost unexampled; I never saw even a 
ruffle in the great sea of his placidity and goodness. 

We have given here the pictures of him in his College days, 
because he retained through life the characteristics therein 
described. 

Immediately after graduation he accepted the position of 
Computer at the Nautical Almanac Office in Cambridge; the 
work, tedious but easy, suited his somewhat irregular hours, 
and he eked out his slender salary by sending scientific ar- 

228 



Harvard Class of 1852 

tides to the New York Evening Post, The Nation and the 
North American Review. Although, as he wrote to Fisher, 
"Holworthy was the scene of Eden from which too much 
knowledge forced us to part," he found compensation in the 
many friends who still surrounded him. Until 1861 he boarded 
with Mrs. Lyman, formerly of Northampton, who had been 
instrumental in persuading Mr. Wright to send Chauncey to 
college. By his tender care during the last years of her life he 
repaid her early interest, and his friendship with her daughter, 
Mrs. Lesley, and affection for her little girls, were among the 
brightest spots in his life. On the children, indeed, he lavished 
the love which found no other vent in a childless bachelor, and 
their father, Dr. Lesley, writes: 

One of my pleasantest recollections of Chauncey is of his habit 
of carrying my daughter Mary in his arms around the garden of 
Mrs. Lyman's house in Cambridge. She was never so happy as 
when he held her. Their mutual attachment was beautiful to see. 
His heart was of pure gold. His generosity to the young, the weak, 
and the aged, bore the stamp of a refined nobility. He was in 
truth one of Nature's noblemen, incapable of a meanness, unselfish, 
passionately fond of pure and true people, and holding himself aloof 
from those who fell below that standard. He vouchsafed his friend- 
ship to few, but from those he withheld nothing. 

This is not the place for an analysis of Wright's intellect 
and ability. 1 Receptive rather than productive, he neverthe- 
less contributed many papers to The Nation, and an article 
on "The Winds and the Weather" to the Atlantic Monthly, 
whose editor, Francis Ellingwood Abbot (H. C. 1859) was 
long his correspondent; he read papers also before his Club 
in Cambridge. In 1872 he made his only visit to Europe, 
meeting his Cambridge friends, the Norton family, in Paris, 
and passing a night with Darwin, who had previously writ- 
ten to thank him for his article on "Evolution by Natural 
Selection," which he had sent him. 

For several winters Wright taught philosophy in Professor 
Agassiz's school, which he greatly enjoyed; in 1870 he was 
asked to deliver a course of lectures on Psychology before the 
University, but he found it difficult to descend to the level 
of his hearers, and was not especially successful as a teacher 

1 See Letters of Chauncey Wright, pp. 374-383. 
229 



Annals of the 

in the course which he gave in Theoretical Physics, although 
Gurney said that he remembered "his examination papers as 
models of what such papers should be." 

Miss Catharine Lathrop Howard, who with her sisters 
conducted a school for girls at Springfield, wrote that she 
always recalled his 

sweetest courtesy in explaining often very abstruse or scientific 
matters . . . He often went to Northampton to spend Thanks- 
giving, and always came here to tea on his way back, with the 
faithfulness which marked his friendships; and we were in the habit 
of storing up difficult questions which came up in our classes for 
Mr. Wright's annual visit. The late train to Boston left Spring- 
field at two o'clock in the night! and you know how oblivious he 
was of the lapse of time . . . We often felt shivers of sleepiness, 
but Mr. Wright would seem unconscious of everything and plac- 
idly say, as he rose to go in the small hours, "I see you keep the 
same late hours you always did." 

With the "inexorable years" a great loneliness descended 
upon Chauncey Wright, for in the companionship of his 
friends he seemed to live and have his being, and as they 
married, and scattered beyond his daily reach, they carried 
with them his life's happiness. The Heavenly portents, 
which he wrote in the Class Book prescribed for him an equa- 
ble temperament, might also have foretold that his passage 
through life was to be solitary, unsolaced by the love of home 
and children, which to one of his affectionate nature would 
have brought fullness of joy, and left no room for the crav- 
ing which was begotten of his loneliness. 

In 1875, Wright's friend, Professor Winlock, died. In 
The Nation of 17 June, following, appeared a sketch of him 
by Wright. Three months later he was himself stricken down, 
dying suddenly in the night at his Cambridge lodgings on the 
twelfth of September, 1875. 

His principal papers, with an introduction by Charles 
Eliot Norton, were published in 1877 in a volume entitled 
"Philosophical Discussions," the appearance of which called 
forth an essay from John Fiske, 1 wherein he writes: 

The sudden and untimely death of Mr. Chauncey Wright . . . 
was an irreparable loss not only to the friends whose privilege it 

1 Chauncey Wright. In "Darwinism and Other Essays," 1879. 
23O 



Harvard Class of 1852 

had been to know so wise and amiable a man, but to the interests 
of sound philosophy in general . . . None save the friends who 
knew the rich treasures of his mind as shown in familiar conversa- 
tion are likely to realize how great is the loss which philosophy has 
sustained in his death . . . 

I never knew an educated man who set so little store by mere 
reading, except Mr. Herbert Spencer; but, like Mr. Spencer, whom 
he resembled in little else, Mr. Wright had an incomprehensible 
way of absorbing all sorts of knowledge, great and small, until the 
number of diverse subjects on which he could instruct even trained 
specialists was quite surprising. There were but few topics on 
which he had not some acute suggestion to offer; and with regard 
to matters of which he was absolutely ignorant — such as music — 
his general good sense and his lack of impulsiveness prevented his 
ever talking foolishly. 

This lack of impulsiveness, a kind of physical and intellectual 
inertness, counted for a great deal both in his excellences and in 
his shortcomings. His movements were slow and ponderous, his 
mild blue eye never lighted with any other expression than placid 
good humour, and his voice never varied its gentle monotony. His 
absolute freedom from egotism made him slow to take offence, and 
among the many accidents of controversy there was none which 
could avail to ruffle him. The patient deference with which he 
would answer the silly remarks of stupid or conceited people was 
as extraordinary as the untiring interest with which he would seek 
to make things plain to the least cultivated intelligence. This kind 
of patient interest, joined with his sweetness of disposition and win- 
ning simplicity of manner, made him a great favourite with children. 
He would amuse and instruct them by the hour together with 
games and stories and conjuror's tricks, in which he had acquired 
no mean proficiency . . . 

In his freedom from all kinds of extra-rational solicitation Mr. 
Wright most completely realized the ideal of the positive philoso- 
pher. His positivism was an affair of temperament as much as of 
conviction; and he illustrates afresh the profound truth of Goethe's 
remark that a man's philosophy is but the expression of his person- 
ality. In his simplicity of life, serenity of mood, and freedom from 
mental or material wants, he well exemplified the principles and 
practice of Epikuros; and he died as peacefully as he had lived, — 
on a summer's night, sitting at his desk with his papers before him 
. . . To have known such a man is an experience one cannot for- 
get or outlive. To have had him pass away, leaving so scanty a 
record of what he had it in him to utter, is nothing less than a pub- 
lic calamity, (pp. 78-80, 106-109) 

231 



Annals of the Harvard Class of 1852 

In 1878 appeared "The Letters of Chauncey Wright, With 
Some Account of his Life" by James Bradley Thayer. 

Wright was elected an Honorary member of Phi Beta 
Kappa in 1858; and he was a Fellow of the American Acad- 
emy of Arts and Sciences. In 1884 a scholarship of $500, to 
be called the Chauncey Wright Fund, was given anony- 
mously for the encouragement of Mathematics. 

The foregoing sketch has been largely plagiarized from 
Thayer's delightful "Letters of Chauncey Wright," already 
referred to. 



232 



SKETCHES 

OF THE 

TEMPORARY MEMBERS 



CODDINGTON BILLINGS FARNSWORTH 

Billings Farnsworth, as his name was given at the time of 
his admission to Harvard, was the son of Dr. Ralph (H. C. 
1821) and Eunice (Billings) Farnsworth, and was born on the 
ninth of September, 1829 at Norwich, Connecticut. In 1848, 
when his son entered College, Dr. Farnsworth was living tem- 
porarily in Buffalo, New York, where he was interested in the 
shipping business of the lakes, in addition to his professional 
practice. 

Billings left Cambridge in July, 1849, and settling in New 
York, became for a time the selling agent for the manufacturing 
firm of Fitch and Company, where he acquitted himself success- 
fully, remaining until 1867; in that year he returned to the 
family home at Norwich, and began to study Medicine. After 
attending lectures at the Medical Department at Yale, and 
being there licenced to practice, he established himself in Nor- 
wich, and followed his profession for some years. Dr. Farns- 
worth married on the sixth of March, 1878, Carrie E. George; 
she died 10 June, 1879; they had no children. 

Frank and outspoken, a strong Republican, he was a loyal 
friend, upright, and generous to those in need. Financial re- 
verses, caused by unsuccessful speculations, overtook him in 
his old age, so overwhelming him that he died by his own hand 
on the fifth of May, 1897. 1 

ROBERT ROLLINS FOWLE 

Robert Rollins Fowle was the son of William Holmes (H. C. 
1826) and Esther De Sheill (Taylor) Fowle of Alexandria, 
Virginia, and was born on the twentieth of March, 1832. He 
prepared for College at the School of Stephen Minot Weld 
(H. C. 1826) in Jamaica Plain. 

Fowle belonged to the Harvard Odd Fellows Society, but 
his stay at Cambridge ended in November, 1850. 

About 1855, he went to Mexico on a prospecting tour, and 
after his return to Alexandria, his father gave him a farm in 
Fairfax County, Virginia, where he lived until the outbreak of 
the War. Enlisting in the Regiment of Alexandria Rifles, he 

1 Many of the facts concerning Dr. Farnsworth are taken from the Obituary Notice 
in the Norwich Evening Record of 6 May, 1897. 

2 35 



Annals of the 

served in the Confederate Army, during the four years of con- 
flict, marrying, on the tenth of October, 1861, Barbara Ward 
Saunders, daughter of Dr. Addison Hunton and Ellen (Moore) 
Saunders. The remainder of his life, after the war, was passed 
at his estate in Fairfax County, where he died on the eighth of 
March, 1872. Mrs. Fowle survives him, with their two chil- 
dren, George Fowle, born 20 July, 1867, and Ellen Moore 
Fowle, born 2 September, 1869, now the wife of William Camp- 
bell, Esquire. 

WILLIAM BOYNTON GALE 

The son of John and Harriet (Boynton) Gale, William Boynton 
Gale was born on the eighth of August, 1829, in South Hampton, 
New Hampshire. He entered Harvard College as a Freshman 
in 1848, but left on the first of January, 1850, and studied Law 
in the office of Franklin Pierce and later with Judge Asa Fowler 
of Concord, New Hampshire, being admitted to the Bar in 1853. 
In July of that year, he opened an office at Marlborough, 
Massachusetts, removing thence to Boston in 1878. Mr. Gale 
was for many years one of a quartette of well-remembered 
practitioners at the Middlesex Bar, the other three being 
Benjamin F. Butler, Gustavus A. Somerby and Theodore H. 
Sweetser. He was in partnership with Mr. Somerby, and he 
was also associated with the late Walter Mason, forming other 
partnerships after Mr. Mason's death. 

During his career as a criminal lawyer Mr. Gale was defend- 
ant in twenty-five capital cases, with great success, only two 
of his clients being hanged, and the majority acquitted. It is, 
perhaps, unnecessary to add that he was a convincing jury 
lawyer. During the last ten years of his life he devoted himself 
to Civil Law and was frequently consulted as advisory counsel. 

He did admirable work for the Middlesex Law Library, 
building it up from a collection of a few volumes to one of the 
most complete and well selected Law Libraries in the country. 

He was a prominent member of the Masonic Order both 
in Marlborough and in Boston. 

An intimate friend of the late General Butler, they passed 
much time together on the yacht America. 

Mr. Gale married first Anna Q. Gale, who was born 13 Sep- 
tember, 1832 and died 7 December, 1879. His second wife 

236 



Harvard Class of 1852 

was Cassandra, daughter of William and Catherine McKinney, 
born in Brooklyn, New York, 28 June, 1853; she died 29 No- 
vember, 1 89 1. 

His son John P. Gale was admitted to the Middlesex Bar in 
February, 1881, and was for a time in partnership with his 
father, but moved to Seattle, Washington, about 1887: he 
died at Redlands, California, in May, 1893. 

Gale died at the Hotel Vendome, Boston, where he made his 
home, on December twenty-sixth, 1899. 

JOHN HARDING 

John Harding was born on the fifth of January, 183 1, the son 
of General William Giles Harding. His grandfather, also John 
Harding, had purchased the farm on Harding Road, now 
known as Belle Meade, about five miles from Nashville, Tenn- 
essee, and there John Harding, 2nd, was born. He entered 
Harvard in 1850, but ill health obliged him to leave Cambridge 
in March, 185 1, and his education was concluded at Chapel 
Hill, North Carolina. 

General Harding having presented his son with the beautiful 
estate known as the Belle Vue Farm, John Harding devoted 
himself to the breeding of thoroughbred horses. 

He married (1) March twenty-eighth, 1853, Sophy W. 
Merritt of Lawrenceville, Virginia. She died in August, 1855, 
leaving one daughter, Sophie M., who became the wife of 
Granville S. Johnson; neither of whom is now living. Mr. 
Harding married (2), in December, 1856, Mrs. Margaret 
Murphy Owen of Mississippi; they had three children: Wil- 
liam G. Harding, now of St. Louis; John Harding, Jr., of Nash- 
ville; and one daughter, who married Charles P. Curd of St. 
Louis, who has since died. Mr. Harding left several grand- 
children, his namesake John Harding, 3rd, being at present 
(1918) a member of the Aviation Corps, U. S. A. 

Mr. Harding belonged to the old type of Southern gentle- 
men, with the chivalry and hospitality which are the con- 
comitants of the race. 

A "welcome ever smiled" at his door, and he was never so 
happy as when entertaining his friends. 

He died on the sixteenth of March, 1914, at the home of his 
sister, Mrs. Howell E. Jackson, West Meade Farm, near Nash- 

237 



Annals of the 

ville, where he had lived for many years, and whence, in 1910, 
he sent greetings to his old classmates, in reply to a letter from 
the Harvard Directory Office. 



GEORGE WASHINGTON HORR 

George Washington Horr was the son of Major Warren and 
Sarah Pierce (Sloan) Horr, and was born at New Salem, Massa- 
chusetts, June twenty-second, 1829. He taught school for 
three years, beginning at the age of fifteen, and attended school 
himself at Quaboag Seminary, Warren Academy and Phillips 
Academy, Andover, graduating from the Williston Seminary, 
Easthampton, where he was Salutatorian in a class of twenty- 
eight. 

He remained at College during the Freshman year only, leav- 
ing to join the Junior Class at the Law School in 1849: he was 
there for two years, and was one of the original members of 
the Story Association, although he did not take his degree 
until i860. During the interim he studied in a lawyer's office 
at Greenfield, and was later student-clerk with the firm of 
Lincoln, Maynard and Chatfield of New York. 

Being admitted to the Bar, he opened an office in i860 at 
New Salem, but seeing a more promising prospect at Athol, 
removed there in 1863 and there practised Law for over thirty 
years. He was Commissioner of Insolvency for Franklin 
County for two terms, Chairman of the New Salem School 
Committee, and Moderator of the Town Meeting, later filling 
the same offices at Athol. He had extensive practice in the 
Department of the Interior at Washington and during the last 
years of his life devoted himself to pension claims practice. 

On the outbreak of the war, Horr enlisted in the Twenty- 
third Massachusetts Regiment, but was refused enrolment on 
account of physical disability; he was, however, an associate 
member of the Hubbard V. Smith Post, G. A. R. 

While living in Brooklyn, New York, in 1854, in conjunction 
with Charles G. Colby, Horr founded the Literary Bureau, 
and his interests were always of an historical and literary order. 
He prepared weekly historical articles on Athol for publica- 
tion in 1876, and he contributed to Jewett's History of Worces- 
ter County the stories of Petersham, Dana, Athol, Royalston 
and Phillipston, writing a sketch on the Flora of Northern 

238 



Harvard Class of 1852 



Worcester for Picturesque Worcester, and many other papers 
on kindred subjects. He lectured frequently before Lyceums 
and Schools, often accompanying his talks with diagrams and 
maps, and was in great demand as a public speaker. His wife, 
who shared hi.s literary tastes, died about 1880; they had no 
children. 

Feeling unwell, Mr. Horr determined to pass the night of 
October twenty-third, 1895, in his office, and was found the 
next morning by the janitor, having died from heart disease. 

He was a member of the Harvard Law School Association, 
and the Worcester County Bar Association. 

JOHN CLARK HOWARD 

John Clark Howard was the son of Dr. John Clark Howard 
(H. C. 1825) and his wife Elizabeth Winslow Chase. His 
father was a well-known Boston physician, as had been his 
father of the same name (H. C. 1790). 

Howard was born in Boston on the twenty-second of July, 
1830 and entered College in the Freshman year. He remained 
there, however, only until March, 1850. Following in the 
footsteps of two generations, he began to study Medicine, but 
before completing his course, was attacked with consumption, 
and died in Boston on the twenty-first of December, 1852. 

SAMUEL EDWIN IRESON 

Samuel Edwin Ireson was the son of Samuel Jenks and Sarah 
(Johnson) Ireson, and was born at Lynn on October twenty- 
second, 1830. He prepared for College at the Lynn Academy, 
of which Jacob Batchelder (Dartmouth College 1830) was 
then Principal, and entered Harvard in 1848 as Freshman. 
He remained there only until the end of the Sophomore year, 
leaving to study Law in the office of Hubbard and Story of 
Boston; but he regretted having given up a College education, 
and returning to Cambridge in October, 1852, became a mem- 
ber of the Class of 1853, and graduated with that Class. 1 

In October, 1854, he was admitted to the Suffolk Bar and 
practised Law in Boston, while continuing to make his home in 

1 See sketch of Ireson in Report of the Class of 1853 (1913). A'Irs. Ireson, who is 
still living, is therein said to have died in 1903. 

239 



Annals of the 

Lynn. He was Assistant Clerk of the Boston Police Court in 
1855, and in 1872 was appointed City Solicitor of Lynn, dying 
while in office on September seventh, 1875. 

He married, 27 April, 1874, Ellen, daughter of Josiah Wheeler 
of Lynn, who survived him. They had no children. 



SAMUEL PEARSE JENNISON 

Samuel Pearse Jennison 1 was born at Stockbridge, Massa- 
chusetts, on the ninth of May, 1830, the son of James and 
Mary (Lamb) Jennison. During his short sojourn at Harvard, 
he was a member of the Iadma Debating Club, but he severed 
his connection with College at the beginning of the Sopho- 
more year, in September, 1849, and betook himself to Concord, 
New Hampshire, where he was for two years Principal of the 
High School, reading Law meanwhile in the office of Judge 
Asa Fowler, and being admitted to the Bar in 1857. 

Having decided to try his fortune in the West, he moved 
to St. Paul, Minnesota, in March of the same year, and en- 
gaged in teaching until the following year when assured legal 
prospects offered, and he became a partner of Judge David 
Cooper. Always interested in politics, Jennison took an active 
part in the canvass preceding 1857 and 1859, and in i860 was 
appointed Private Secretary to Governor Ramsey. 

Two years earlier, on the second of August, 1858, he married 
Lucia A. K. Wood, daughter of Amos and Louise (Wellington) 
Wood of Concord, New Hampshire, who was born 4 June, 
1838. 

On the outbreak of the war Jennison became Second Lieu- 
tenant of Company 2, Second Regiment of Minnesota Volun- 
teers, serving in the Indian Country on the Minnesota River, 
and in all the Southern campaigns and battles, and being 
severely wounded on the second day of the battle of Nash- 
ville. He received the Brevet title of Brigadier General, 
United States Volunteers, and was mustered out in August, 
1865. 

Returning to St. Paul, he became Associate Editor of the 
Daily Press, but trouble from an old wound obliged him to 

1 His brother James Jennison of the Harvard Class of 1847 was successively Tutor, 
Instructor in Elocution, Registrar, and Librarian of the Divinity School. He was 
disrespectfully called "Bogey Jennison." 

24O 



Harvard Class of 1852 

give up the occupation, and for six months he acted as Man- 
ager of the celebrated Holmden Oil Company at Pithole, 
Pennsylvania. During 1867 and 1868 he was Private Secre- 
tary to Governor Marshall, and Chief Clerk of the House of 
Representatives, removing in 1869 to Red Wing, Minnesota, 
where he was proprietor of the Red Wing Printing Company, 
Secretary of State 1872 and 1873, and Private Secretary to 
Governor Hubbard from 1882 to 1887. 

From Red Wing he again moved, in 1894, to Covina, Los 
Angeles County, California, and devoted himself to the raising 
of citrus fruit, dying at his home there on the thirtieth of 
November, 1909. 

General Jennison had always loved music, and during his 
residence at St. Paul, was President of the Singing Society. 
Although he had been indisposed for a few days, his illness 
was supposed to be so slight, that Mrs. Jennison had gone out 
for a short time; in fact, only thirty minutes before the end, 
the neighbors heard him singing some of his favorite songs. 
Upon her return she 

found him sitting dead in his chair with the song book from which he 
had been singing on the table beside him. The end had come peace- 
fully and without a struggle, a beautiful passing of a man who had 
completed a great life's work. 

His death 

removed one of the most prominent figures in Covina, a man with a 
brilliant Civil War record, and until his removal to Covina, active in 
politics and journalism in Minnesota. As a lawyer, soldier, journal- 
ist, politician, statesman and finally a citrus fruit grower, General 
Jennison played an unusually important part in affairs until within a 
short time of his death. His last public appearance was as one of the 
principal speakers at the banquet given by the citrus growers of 
Southern California in Los Angeles in September. 1 

A brave soldier and a man of great force of character, his 
ability as an editorial writer was widely recognized. One who 
was long associated with him on the Red Wing Daily Republi- 
can writes of the unbounded admiration and respect which he 
inspired, not only by his high ideals and entire lack of self- 
interest, but also by his breadth of knowledge, grasp of public 

1 From the Covina Argus of Saturday, 4 December, 1909. 
24I 



Annals of the 

affairs and linguistic accomplishment. "The training I re- 
ceived under his kind yet exacting tutorship has been invalu- 
able to me in later life," he adds, and "There is no man I have 
met in active life for whose memory I have greater veneration." 
General Jennison had four sons: James, born 26 January, 
i860; Paul, born 24 February, 1868; Wellington, born 19 May, 
1869, and Theodore, born 29 May, 1870. His two elder sons, 
with their mother, survived him. 

LEWIS ELLIS JOSSELYN 

Lewis Ellis Josselyn was the son of Lewis and Emeline 
(Ellis) Josselyn and was born in Boston on the sixth of June, 
183 1. He was prepared for College by John Brooks Felton 
(H. C. 1847), but left Harvard at the end of the Freshman year, 
influenced perhaps by the fact that his father, who had lived in 
Cambridge during the previous year, was then moving to Lynn. 

Josselyn studied Law after severing his college connections 
and established himself in an office at No. 27 Court Street, 
Boston, residing meanwhile at Lynn. 

On the thirty-first of March, 1855, hemarriedMary A. Ropes, 
daughter of Andrew Ropes of Salem. Abandoning the Law 
in favor of the theatre, Josselyn was at one time a member of an 
English Dramatic Company, and at the time of his death, he 
had been for some years a teacher of Elocution. A sufferer 
from phthisis, he died at his house in Boston on the ninth of 
September, 1865, leaving a widow and three daughters, Mary 
Elizabeth, born 1 February, 1855, Emeline Ellis, born 23 
January, 1857, and Laura Janetta, born 23 February, 1859. 1 

HENRY MOORE 

Henry Moore was the son of Francis and Sarah (Cheever) 
Moore and was born in Brighton on the twenty-first of Novem- 
ber, 1828. 

He prepared for Harvard at Phillips Academy, Andover, 
and entered in the Freshman year, leaving at the beginning 
of the Sophomore year for Amherst College, where he gradu- 
ated in 1852. 

Soon after graduation, he removed to Houston, Texas, 

1 These names and dates are taken from the Petition for Guardianship (Suffolk 
Probate Files, No. 45,981). 

242 






Harvard Class of 1852 

where he took charge of the Houston Academy, in the mean- 
time studying Law. For six months he was Editor of the 
Houston Daily Telegraph, and he subsequently published 
Douglas's "Doctrine of Squatter Sovereignty" and an article 
entitled "Two Years of the South." 

On returning to Lynn, in 1854, Mr. Moore became Head- 
master of the Cobbet Grammar School, a position which he 
filled for twenty-five years. Careful, conscientious and pains- 
taking as a teacher, the high standard of the School was largely 
due to his ability and methods, and many of Lynn's most suc- 
cessful citizens owe to him their early training. Mr. Moore was 
President of the Lynn School Teachers' Association and for two 
years President of the Essex County Teachers' Convention. 

He married, 18 October, 1852, Eliza Ellen Rhodes, daughter 
of Trevett Mansfield Rhodes of Lynn. They had six children: 
Ida L., Henry (who spells his name Mohr), Frank T., Mary 
(married and living in Schenectady, New York), Annie L., for 
many years a teacher in Lynn, now the wife of an American 
physician residing at Alexandria, Egypt, and Frederick W., 
born about 1872. 

Mr. Moore died on the twenty-ninth of March, 1879. 



SAINT THOMAS JENIFER PHILLIPS 

The son of John P. Phillips Esq., Saint Thomas 1 was born 
at Warrenton, Virginia, on the fifteenth of July, 1832. 

He prepared for college at the school of Mr. R. M. McNally 
of Baltimore, and entered Harvard in the Junior year. He 
remained at College but a short time, leaving in November, 
1850. The following extract from the Alexandria Gazette and 
Virginia Advertiser of 11 July, 1856, tells the short story of 
his subsequent career. He was unmarried. 

On Friday, the 4th day of July, at the residence of his father, near 
Warrenton, St. Thomas J. Philips, aged about twenty-four years. 
The deceased was the son of John P. Philips, Esq., a prominent mem- 
ber of the Warrenton bar, and had himself but recently entered upon 
the practice of law. Having for some time past suffered with ill 

1 One of the members of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 was Daniel Jenifer 
of St. Thomas Parish, Maryland, whose custom it was always to sign himself Dan[iel] 
of St. Thomas Jenifer. See Century Book for Young Americans by Elbridge S. Brooks. 
He may have been an ancestor of Phillips. 

243 



Annals of the 

health, his friends had observed in him an increasing despondency 
and depression of spirits, which while it was a source of regret, yet 
awakened no serious apprehension. The lamentable act which has 
closed his earthly existence, was doubtless the result of a temporary 
aberration of intellect, superinduced by physical disease. The de- 
ceased was a young man of sprightly mind, of a generous and social 
disposition, and of great personal popularity. He had enjoyed edu- 
cational advantages of the highest order, and might have taken a 
prominent place in the arena of life. The melancholy character of 
his decease, has served to deepen the gloom, which the death of one 
so young, under any circumstances would have impressed upon the 
hearts of his numerous relatives and friends. 



THOMAS RIGGS 

Thomas Riggs was the son of Samuel and Margaret (Norris) 
Riggs, and was born in Baltimore on 7 December, 183 1. He 
prepared for College under Samuel McNally, entering Harvard 
in the Sophomore year. He transferred himself to the Law 
School in 1850, but studied there for about two months only. 
On returning to Baltimore, he was for a time connected with the 
firm of Armistead and Company. For the last thirty-five years 
of his life, Riggs resided in Washington, where his father was one 
of the organizers of the Riggs National Banking Company. 

He died in Washington, D. C, 7 August, 1920, in his eighty- 
ninth year. 1 

Mr. Riggs married (1) Elizabeth Swan Kemp, daughter of 
Edward D. Kemp; they had two daughters, Nannie Kemp 
Riggs, born 31 July, 1858, and Margaretta Riggs, born 25 
October, i860. He married (2) Catharine W. Gilbert, daugh- 
ter of Samuel C. Gilbert of Gilbertsville, New York; they have 
had two children, Catharine Gilbert Riggs, born 4 February, 
1872, and Thomas Gilbert Riggs, born 17 October, 1873, now 
(1920) Governor of Alaska. 

GUIGNARD SCOTT 

Guignard Scott was the eldest son of John Alexander and 
Sarah Slam (Guignard) Scott, and was born at Woodville, 
Mississippi, on the fourth of March, 1828. 2 

1 An obituary notice is in the Washington Post of 9 August, 1920, p. 7/2. 

2 This date is taken from the Admission Book, but Scott's sister, Mrs. Lee, gives 
the date of his birth as 18 March, 1829. 

244 



Harvard Class of 1852 

His grandfather, AbramM. Scott, originally of South Carolina, 
was the sixth Governor of Mississippi, dying in office in 1833. 

Guignard entered Harvard with the Freshman Class, having 
fitted for College at Mr. Weld's school in Jamaica Plain. A 
Detur was awarded him in the Sophomore year and he was a 
member of the Harvard Lodge of Odd Fellows and of the 
Institute of 1770, remaining at Cambridge through part of the 
Junior year. We are unable to fix the exact date of his depart- 
ure. His father meanwhile had removed, after the death of 
his wife, to Scotland Plantation near Greenville, Mississippi, 
where he died in the Autumn of 1852. 

Guignard having previously studied Law for a time at 
Columbia, South Carolina, then assumed the care of the 
Greenville estate, taking charge of the interests of his brothers 
and sisters. 

He volunteered immediately on the outbreak of the Civil 
War, enlisting with his two brothers, in the Southern Army. 
He was in Company D of the Twenty-Eighth Mississippi 
Cavalry, Colonel Starke, in General Armstrong's Brigade, 
and was killed in action in Giles County, Tennessee, on the 
twenty-fourth of November, 1864. He was unmarried. 

Scott is still remembered by his classmate Dr. Oliver, and 
also by Dr. Samuel Abbott Green of 1851; and his sister, Mrs. 
Lee, writes us that his friends always spoke of him in the 
highest terms, one of them especially, Dr. Samuel Dunn of 
Greenville, who loved to tell her own little daughter that 
"her uncle Guignard was the noblest man he ever knew." 

Scott was fond of reading, and was a lover of hunting and 
fishing. 

CHARLES HENRY STICKNEY 

Charles Henry Stickney was the son of Jeremiah Chaplin 
(H. C. 1824) and Ann (Frazier) Stickney of Salem, Massa- 
chusetts, and was born 29 September, 1830. He entered 
Harvard College with the Freshman Class in 1848, but left in 
June of the following year. 

He studied Law, and was admitted to the Bar in 1853, hav- 
ing married, 29 September, 1852, Susan M. Austin, daughter 
of Abner and Elizabeth (Wicks) Austin of Lynn, who was 
descended from the first white baby born in Lynn. 

245 



Annals of the 

Mr. Stickney was a Justice of the Peace, and Commissioner 
for New York and Wisconsin. 

In 1862 he entered the Army as Sergeant in Company F, 
Fourth Massachusetts Regiment, and was later transferred to 
the Commissary Department. 

He was a member of G. A. R. Post No. 5 (General Lander 
Post) of Lynn. 

On returning from the War, Mr. Stickney resumed his pro- 
fession, which consisted chiefly of Court practice. 

He had five children: Anne Elizabeth, born 10 March, 1853, 
now Mrs. Orrin P. Graves of Lynn; Frederick Austin, born 14 
October, 1855; Charles Henry, Jr., born 5 July, 1857, died 6 
January, i860; Frank Chaplin and Alice Martin, twins, born 
17 December, 1861, of whom Alice died in infancy. 

Mr. Stickney died on the tenth of June, 1900, his wife on 
the twenty-seventh of July, 19 14. 

HENRY STONE 

Although Henry Stone was with the Class during the Fresh- 
man year only, he made so warm a place for himself in the 
affection of his' classmates that he was always looked upon as 
one of themselves. 

The son of the Reverend Thomas Treadwell 1 and Laura 
(Poor) Stone of Bolton, Massachusetts, he was born in An- 
dover, Maine, on the seventeenth of August, 1830. It is not 
known why he decided to leave Harvard, but he finished his 
collegiate course and graduated at Bowdoin in 1852; from the 
programme of the Commencement Ball of 1852, which was 
preserved among the papers of a classmate, we learn that he 
enjoyed the distinction of being one of the managers on the 
occasion. 

Stone's uncle, John Alfred Poor 2 of Portland, controlled 
the newspaper there published, called The State of Maine, 
a sheet largely devoted to the railway interests and commercial 
growth of the City, and for a time his nephew acted as its 
Editor, moving later to New York, where he was connected 
with the Evening Post. 

1 Bowdoin College i8zo. He was for many years the oldest living graduate of 
Bowdoin. 

2 Bowdoin College ^1845. 

246 



Harvard Class of 1852 

Having taken the course at the Harvard Divinity School, 
Stone graduated from there in i860, but his ministerial labors 
were confined to preaching several times in Massachusetts 
towns and to a settlement of a few months at Fond du Lac, 
Michigan, for on August twenty-second, 1861, he was com- 
missioned Second Lieutenant, First Wisconsin Volunteers, 
and being assigned to the Army of the Ohio, was ordered to 
Kentucky; after many battles and after serving on the staff 
of Major General G. H. Thomas, Department of the Cumber- 
land, he was finally mustered out, 26 December, 1865, with 
the Brevet title of Colonel, United States Volunteers "for 
faithful and meritorious service during the war." 

Having acted as Chief Police Commissioner at Nashville, 
Tennessee, and Acting Chief of the Census Bureau at Wash- 
ington, Colonel Stone was for many years in charge of Poor's 
Manual of Railroads in New York. 

Coming to Boston in 1881, he was one of the State Board of 
Lunacy and Charity from 1889 to 1894, and when he resigned 
he was appointed Superintendent of Out-door Relief on the 
same Board, having also been nominated, in 1891, by Gover- 
nor Russell as Police Commissioner. 

Colonel Stone was twice married, first, on August twenty- 
first, 1874, to Garaphelia B. Howard, daughter of Amasa and 
Sally Howard, of West Bridgewater, who died in Boston, 
19 September, 1881; and second, 22 October, 1882, to Mrs. 
Cara E. Whiton, daughter of James and Mary Hanscom of 
Portsmouth, New Hampshire, who survived him. He had no 
children. 

He died on January eighteenth, 1896, in Boston. 

The foregoing brief statement of facts fails to convey any 
idea of Colonel Stone's charm of personality and decided liter- 
ary ability. He contributed often to magazines, publishing 
in the Atlantic of October, 1891, an able and appreciative 
article upon General Thomas. He wrote for the Loyal Legion 
tributes to General Sherman, Captain Shurtleff and Major 
General Corse. In 1892 he issued in collected form the many 
wise and witty sayings of James Russell Lowell while our 
Ambassador to Great Britain. As one of his Loyal Legion 
Companions said of him, "His was a fascinating personality 
and his literary instincts would have made him notable if he 
had only had incentive." During his service as Adjutant- 

247 






Annals of the 

General on General Thomas's staff he was always ready "to 
tackle any subject that nobody knew how to handle, and the 
Army tributes to him are very tender and appreciative." 
Colonel Stone was an agreeable lecturer and in May, 1893, 
addressed the Vermont Commandery of the Loyal Legion, 
on presenting a banner and three colours from the Massachu- 
setts Commandery. 

Genial, tender, loyal, upright, Henry Stone was truly loved 
by the friends who knew him best. 

He was a member of the Examiner Club, of the Loyal Legion, 
of the Massachusetts Military Historical Society, and of the 
Harvard Musical Association. He was also one of the original 
members of the '52 Dining Club, resigning therefrom some 
years before his death. 

RUSSELL STURGIS 

Russell Sturgis was the son of Russell (H. C. 1823) and 
Mary Greene (Hubbard) Sturgis, and was born in Boston 
October third, 1831. Leaving College in the Freshman year, 
he was at an institution in Maine for a short time. 

He volunteered on the outbreak of the war, and was First 
Lieutenant of the Corps of Cadets on duty at Fort Warren, 
Boston Harbor, in September, 1862, being appointed the 
first Captain of the Forty-fifth Massachusetts Regiment; 
he was raised, in October, to the rank of Major. He served 
with the Regiment in North Carolina, and took part in the 
Battle of Bachelor's Creek. He was mustered out in July, 
1863. 

Sturgis was for a few years in business at Manila and Shang- 
hai, and for a short time in Boston as well, but he retired early 
from active life, and during his later years devoted himself to 
the interests of the Episcopal Church, and the Young Men's 
Christian Association of Boston. 

Mr. Sturgis married (1) 10 January, 1856, Susan Welles, who 
died 12 December, 1862; he married (2) 29 May, 1866, Margaret 
McCulloch, who survived him. His children were: Russell, 
born 16 December, 1856; Susan Welles, born 11 July, 1858; 
Richard Clipston, born 24 December, i860; William Codman, 
born 15 November, 1862; Sullivan Warren and Edward, twins, 
born 24 April, 1868; James McCulloch, born 13 November, 

248 



Harvard Class of 1852 

1872, and Lucy Codman, born 11 February, 1876. His six sons 
all graduated from Harvard. 

Mr. Sturgis died at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on the 
fourteenth of October, 1899. He was always regarded by the 
Class of '52 as one of themselves, and attended many of the 
anniversary celebrations. 

REUBEN TOWER, JUNIOR 

The youngest of the seven sons 1 of Reuben and Deborah 
Taylor (Pearce) Tower, Reuben Tower, Jr., was born at the 
Tower Homestead in the village of Waterville, Oneida County, 
New York, on June seventeenth, 1829. 

Fitting for College at the Oxford Academy, Oxford, New 
York, and at Phillips Academy, Exeter, New Hampshire, he 
entered Harvard in 1848, but was obliged to leave in his 
Sophomore year on account of illness. Mr. Tower devoted 
himself thenceforth to farming and the raising of blooded 
horses, and was for eight years Supervisor of the town of 
Sangerfield; he was also President of the Village. He was a 
lifelong Democrat. 

Near the main street of the Village he erected for his resi- 
dence and office a building one hundred feet long and fifteen 
feet high, and finished inside in paneled oak. At one end is a 
tower running up one hundred feet, wherein are installed a 
clock and chime of ten bells. 2 A bachelor, Mr. Tower here 
made his home, dying on August twenty-ninth, 1899. 

1 The other sons of Reuben Tower, St., who were at Harvard were De Witt Clinton 
Tower (1842) and James Monroe Tower, a Temporary Member of the Class of 1844. 

2 At his death the building was bought by the Sangerfield Lodge of Freemasons. 
Mr. Tower himself was not a member of the Masonic Order. 



249 



Annals of the 



THE FACULTY AND PARIETAL 
COMMITTEE 



THE COLLEGE FACULTY 



1848- 

Hon. Edward Everett, LL.D., 

President. 
Edward Tyrrel Channing, LL.D. 
Rev. James Walker, D.D. 
Charles Beck, P.D. 
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 

A.M. 
Cornelius Conway Felton, LL.D. 



1849 

Benjamin Peirce, LL.D. 
Joseph Lovering, A.M. 
Evangelinus Apostolides Sopho- 
cles, A.M. 
Shattuck Hartwell, A.M. 
Philip Howes Sears, A.M. 
Francis James Child, A.B. 



THE COLLEGE FACULTY 

1 849-1 8 50 



Jared Sparks, LL.D., President. 
Edward Tyrrel Channing, LL.D. 
Rev. James Walker, D.D. 
Charles Beck, P.D. 
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 

A.M. 
Cornelius Conway Felton, LL.D. 



Benjamin Peirce, LL.D. 
Joseph Lovering, A.M. 
Shattuck Hartwell, A.M. 
Francis James Child, A.M. 
John Brooks Felton, A.B. 
Josiah Parsons Cooke, A.B. 



PARIETAL COMMITTEE 



Shattuck Hartwell, A.M., Chair- 
man. 
Henry Augustinus Johnson, A.M. 
Charles Adams Whitcomb, A.B. 
Francis James Child, A.M. 



Nathaniel Hooper, A.M. 
Robert Wheaton, A.B. 
John Brooks Felton, A.B. 
Francis Marion Tower, A.B. 
Josiah Parsons Cooke, A.B. 



250 



Harvard Class of 1852 



THE COLLEGE FACULTY 
1850-1851 



Jared Sparks, LL.D., President. 
Edward Tyrrel Charming, LL.D. 
Rev. James Walker, D.D. 
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 

A.M. 
Cornelius Conway Felton, LL.D. 
Benjamin Peirce, LL.D. 
Francis Bowen, A.M. 



Joseph Lovering, A.M. 
Evangelinus Apostolides Sopho- 
cles, A.M. 
Charles Lowe, A.M. 
John Marshall Marsters, A.B. 
Thomas Chase, A.B. 
Josiah Parsons Cooke, A.B. 



PARIETAL COMMITTEE 



Thomas Chase, A.B., Chairman. 
Evangelinus Apostolides Sopho- 
cles, A.M. 
Nathaniel Hooper, A.M. 
Robert Wheaton, A.B. 



Charles Lowe, A.M. 
John Marshall Marsters, A.B. 
Francis Marion Tower, A.M. 
Josiah Parsons Cooke, A.B. 
Thomas Dwight Howard, A.B. 



THE COLLEGE FACULTY 
1851-1852 



Jared Sparks, LL.D., President. 

Rev. James Walker, D.D. 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 
A.M. 

Cornelius Conway Felton, LL.D. 

Benjamin Peirce, LL.D. 

Joseph Lovering, A.M. 

Evangelinus Apostolides Sopho- 
cles, A.M. 



Francis James Child, A.M. 
George Martin Lane, P.D. 
James Jennison, A.M. 
Charles Lowe, A.M. 
Thomas Chase, A.M. 
Josiah Parsons Cooke, A.M. 
Charles Francis Choate, A.B. 



PARIETAL COMMITTEE 



Thomas Chase, A.M., Chairman. 
Evangelinus Apostolides Sopho- 
cles, A.M. 
Francis James Child, A.M. 
Nathaniel Hooper, A.M. 
James Jennison, A.M. 



Charles Lowe, A.M. 
Francis Marion Tower, A.M. 
Josiah Parsons Cooke, A.M. 
Charles Francis Choate, A.B. 
James Pierce, A.B. 



251 



Annals of the 

THE CLASS AS UNDERGRADUATES 

FRESHMEN 1 



Names Residences Rooms 2 

Alger, Horatio Marlborough H'y 18 

Arnold, Howard Payson Cambridge Mr. Arnold's 

Bonney, Charles Thomas Rochester Mr. Fernald's 

Bradlee, Caleb Davis Boston Mrs. Pratt's 

Brooks, Peter Chardon Boston Misses Jenkins's 

Brown, Henry William Worcester D. 8 

Buttrick, Edward King Cambridge St. 31 

Cary, George Lovell Medway H'y 18 

Chase, Reginald Heber Cambridge Rev. M. B. Chase's 

Cheever, David Williams Portsmouth, N. H. . . St. 17 

Choate, Joseph Hodges Salem H'y 9 

Choate, William Gardner Salem H'y 9 

Cook, Alfred Wellington Cambridge H. 17 

Coolidge, Horace Hopkins .... Boston Mr. Edwards's 

Crowley, John Aloysius Colman . . Boston Mr. Alden's 

Curtis, Thomas James Boston M. 32 

Denny, Henry Gardner Boston Mrs. S. Everett's 

Dwight, John Springfield H. 18 

Farnsworth, Billings Buffalo, N. Y Mrs. Riddell's 

Fisher, George Huntington .... Oswego, N. Y H. 17 

Fowle, Robert Rollins Alexandria, Va. ... St. 17 

Gale, William Boynton South Hampton, N. H. H. 4. 

Gurney, Ephraim Whitman .... Boston Mr. F. Chapman's 

Haven, Samuel Foster Worcester H'y 1 

Head, George Edward Boston Miss Dana's 

Hilliard, Francis William Roxbury H'y I 

Horr, George Washington New Salem Mr. W. Brown's 

Howe, Francis Saltonstall Haverhill D. 10 

Huntington, James St. Albans, Vt Mr. I. Sands's 

Hurd, Francis William Charlestown Misses Upham's 

Hurd, Samuel Hutchins Charlestown Mrs. Pratt's 

Ireson, Samuel Edwin Lynn H. 2 

Jennison, Samuel Pearce Southbridge H. 4 

Josselyn, Lewis Ellis Cambridge Mr. Josselyn's 

Kimball, Jerome Bonaparte .... Blackstone Mr. Fernald's 

King, Benjamin Flint Danvers H. 2 

Moore, Henry Lynn Mr. Fernald's 

1 This and the three following Lists of the Class are taken from the Catalogues of 
the Officers and Students of Harvard College for the Academical Years 1848-49, 
1849-50, 1850-51 and 1851-52, in which there are some inaccuracies in spelling. 

2 Abbreviations. D Divinity Hall H'y Holworthy Hall 

G or Gr. H Graduates' Hall M Massachusetts Hall 

H Hollis Hall S or St. Stoughton Hall 

252 



Harvard Class of 1852 

Names Residences Rooms 

Norris, George Walton [sic] .... Boston Mr. Kendall's 

Oliver, Henry Kemble Lawrence St. 18 

Page, Calvin Gates Boston H. 14 

Peabody, George Augustus .... Salem Mr. Saunders's 

Perry, John Taylor Exeter, N. H H. 3 

Phipps, William Henry Dorchester Mr. Fernald's 

Porter, Josiah Cambridge Mr. Fernald's 

Pratt, Edward Ellerton Boston Mr. Thurston's 

Quincy, Samuel Miller Boston Mr. Upham's 

Richardson, Horace Boston H. 14 

Scott, Guignard Woodville, Miss. . . . Mr. Fernald's 

Sears, Knyvett Winthrop Boston Mr. E. A. Chapman's 

Silsbee, Nathaniel Devereux .... Salem Mrs. Gurney's 

Sohier, George Brimmer Boston Mrs. Willard's 

Sprague, Joseph White Salem H. 30 

Stedman, Charles Ellery Boston Miss Dana's 

Stickney, Austin Roxbury Mr. Wood's 

Stickney, Charles Henry Lynn M. 13 

Stone, Henry Salem St. 3 

Sturgis, Russell Boston Mr. R. Morse's 

Swift, Elijah Falmouth Mr. Fernald's 

Thaxter, Adam Wallace Boston Mr. Whittemore's 

Thayer, James Bradley Northampton M. 26 

Thomas, Gorham Cambridge Dr. Thomas's 

Thorndike, Samuel Lothrop .... Beverly Mrs. Gurney's 

Tower, Reuben Sangerfield, N. Y. . . Mr. J. Wyeth's, Sen. 

Upham, Charles Wentworth .... Salem St. 3 

Ware, Darwin Erastus Salem St. 18 

Ware, Robert Cambridge Dr. Ware's 

Ware, William Robert Milton D. 14 

Wheeler, William Fiske Worcester D. 8 

Whittemore, Horatio Hancock Fiske West Cambridge . . . D. 7 

Willard, Sidney Boston Mr. Kendall's 

Williamson, William Cross .... Belfast, Me H. 5 

Wright, Chauncey Northampton M. 25 



SOPHOMORES 

1849-1850 

Alger, Horatio Marlborough St. 5 

Anderson, Elbert Ellery New York, N. Y. . . . Mrs. Jenkins's 

Arnold, Howard Payson Cambridge Mr. Arnold's 

Blake, John Ellis Brattleboro, Vt. . . . Miss Dana's 

Bonney, Charles Thomas Rochester Mr. F. L. Chapman's 

Bradlee, Caleb Davis Boston Mr. W. Warland's 

Brooks, Peter Chardon Boston Misses Jenkins's 

Brown, Addison Bradford D. 5 

Brown, Henry William Worcester M. 8 

Buttrick, Edward King Cambridge M. 22 

Cary, George Lovell Medway M. 24 

Chase, Reginald Heber Cambridge Rev. M. B. Chase's 

Cheever, David Williams Portsmouth, N. H. . . M. 29 

253 



Annals of the 



Names Residences Rooms 

Choate, Joseph Hodges Salem St. 13 

Choate, William Gardner Salem St. 13 

Collins, Josiah Washington Co., N. C. Misses Jenkins's 

Cook, Alfred Wellington Cambridge M. 13 

Coolidge, Horace Hopkins .... Boston M. 27 

Dana, Charles Francis Boston Mr. Thurston's 

Denny, Henry Gardner Boston Mrs. S. Everett's 

Downes, Henry Hill Charlestown M. 15 

Fisher, George Huntington .... Oswego, N. Y M. 13 

Gale, William Boynton South Hampton, N. H. H. 30 

Gardiner, John Sylvester Boston Mrs. Gurney's 

Greenwood, Augustus Goodwin . . Boston Mrs. Danforth's 

Gurney, Ephraim Whitman .... Boston M. 16 

Haven, Samuel Foster Worcester St. 16 

Head, George Edward Boston H'y 8 

Hilliard, Francis William Roxbury St. 16 

Hooper, Sturgis Boston Misses Jenkins's 

Howard, John Clarke [sic] .... Boston D. 3 

Howe, Francis Saltonstall Haverhill M. 30 

Huntington, James St. Albans, Vt Mr. H. Sands's 

Hurd, Francis William Charlestown Misses Upham's 

Hurd, Samuel Hutchins Charlestown Misses Upham's 

Ireson, Samuel Edwin Lynn H. 30 

Jennison, Samuel Pearce Southbridge St. 5 

Kimball, Jerome Bonaparte .... Blackstone H. 28 

King, Benjamin Flint Danvers H. 28 

Leverett, Frederic Percival .... Prince William's, S. C. . D. 13 

Neal, Edward Horatio Newton L. Falls . . . St. 18 

Norris, George Walton [sic] .... Boston H. 16 

Oliver, Henry Kemble Lawrence St. 14 

Page, Calvin Gates Boston H. 14 

Peabody, George Augustus .... Salem Mr. Saunders's 

Perry, John Taylor Exeter, N. H M. 26 

Phipps, William Henry Dorchester Mr. Fernald's 

Porter, Josiah Cambridge Mr. Fernald's 

Pratt, Edward Ellerton Boston Mr. Saunders's 

Quincy, Samuel Miller Boston Mr. Upham's 

Revere, Paul Joseph Boston Mr. Morse's 

Richardson, Horace Boston H. 14 

Riggs, Thomas Baltimore, Md Mr. W. Warland's 

Rodgers, Edwin Aldrich Boston H. 19 

Scott, Guignard Woodville, Miss. ... M. 14 

Sears, Knyvett Winthrop Boston Mr. E. A. Chapman's 

Silsbee, Nathaniel Devereux .... Salem Misses Jenkins's 

Sohier, George Brimmer Boston Mr. Saunders's 

Sprague, Joseph White Salem M. 10 

Stedman, Charles Ellery Boston . H. 8 

Stickney, Austin Roxbury Mr. Stickney's 

Swift, Elijah Falmouth Mr. F. L. Chapman's 

Thaxter, Adam Wallace Boston Mr. Fernald's 

Thayer, James Bradley Northampton M. 7 

Thomas, Gorham Cambridge Dr. Thomas's 

Thorndike, Samuel Lothrop .... Beverly Mrs. Gurney's 

254 



Harvard Class of 1852 

Names Residences Rooms 

Upham, Charles Wentworth . . . . Salem Mr. T. J. Whittemore's 

Vinal, Charles Carroll Scituate St. 18 

Ware, Darwin Erastus Salem St. 14 

Ware, Robert Cambridge H. 10 

Ware, William Robert Milton St. 12 

Waring, William Henry Brooklyn, N. Y. . . . H. 19 

Wheeler, William Fiske Worcester M. 8 

Whittemore, Horatio Hancock Fiske West Cambridge ... St. 20 

Willard, Sidney Boston M. 32 

Williamson, William Cross .... Belfast, Me H. 5 

Wright, Chauncey Northampton M. 25 



JUNIORS 
1850-1851 

Alger, Horatio Marlborough H. 29 

Anderson, Elbert Ellery New York, N. Y. . . . S. 23 

Arnold, Howard Payson Cambridge Mr. Arnold's 

Blake, John Ellis Brattleboro, Vt. . . . H'y 13 

Bonney, Charles Thomas Rochester S. 31 

Bradlee, Caleb Davis Boston ....... Mr. J. Warland's 

Brooks, Peter Chardon Boston Mr. Saunders's 

Brown, Addison Bradford H. 29 

Brown, Henry William ...... Worcester M. 8 

Buttrick, Edward King Cambridge S. 12 

Cary, George Lovell Medway M. 24 

Chase, Reginald Heber Cambridge Rev. M. B. Chase's 

Cheever, David Williams Portsmouth, N. H. . . M. 28 

Choate, Joseph Hodges Salem H. 27 

Choate, William Gardner Salem H. 27 

Collins, Josiah Washington Co., N. C. Misses Jenkins's 

Cook, Alfred Wellington Cambridge H. 24 

Coolidge, Horace Hopkins .... Boston M. 11 

Crowley, John Colman Boston Miss Dana's 

Curtis, Thomas James Boston Mr. Morse's 

Denny, Henry Gardner Boston M. 25 

Downes, Henry Hill Boston S. 24 

Dwight, John Springfield Miss Dana's 

Fowle, Robert Rollins Alexandria, Va. . . . Misses Upham's 

Gardiner, John Sylvester Boston Mrs. Howe's 

Greenwood, Augustus Goodwin . . Boston Mr. White's 

Gurney, Ephraim Whitman .... Boston H. 24 

Harding, John Nashville, Tenn. . . . 

Haven, Samuel Foster Worcester S. 28 

Head, George Edward Boston H. 12 

Hilliard, Francis William Roxbury S. 28 

Hooper, Sturgis Boston Misses Jenkins's 

Howe, Francis Saltonstall Haverhill S. 8 

Huntington, James St. Albans, Vt Mr. C. P. Thayer's 

Hurd, Francis William Charlestown M. 13 

Hurd, Samuel Hutchins Charlestown Misses Upham's 

Jennison, Samuel Pearce Southbridge 

255 



Annals of the 



Names Residences Rooms 

Kimball, Jerome Bonaparte .... Blackstone Mr. Palmer's 

King, Benjamin Flint Danvers Mrs. Stickney's 

Leverett, Frederic Percival .... Prince William's, S. C. D. 13 

Leverett, William Cole Grafton Mr. Grames's 

McKim, William Duncan Baltimore, Md Mr. J. Cutler's 

Neal, Edward Horatio Newton L. Falls . . . S. 9 

Norris, George Walter Boston H. 28 

Oliver, Henry Kemble Lawrence H. 23 

Peabody, George Augustus .... Salem Mr. Saunders's 

Perry, John Taylor Exeter, N. H M. 26 

Philips, St. Thomas Jenifer .... Warrenton, Va. . . . Misses Upham's 

Phipps, William Henry Dorchester S. 12 

Porter, Josiah Cambridge S. 23 

Quincy, Samuel Miller Boston Mr. Shedd's 

Revere, Paul Joseph Boston Mr. Shedd's 

Richardson, Horace Boston H. 8 

Rodgers, Edwin Aldrich Boston H. 1 

Scott, Guignard Woodville, Miss. . . . Mr. Guyot's 

Silsbee, Nathaniel Devereux .... Salem Mr. Saunders's 

Sohier, George Brimmer Boston Mr. Saunders's 

Sprague, Joseph White Salem H. 31 

Stedman, Charles Ellery Boston H. 9 

Stickney, Austin Roxbury Mrs. Stickney's 

Swift, Elijah Falmouth S. 31 

Thaxter, Adam Wallace Boston Mr. Fernald's 

Thayer, James Bradley Northampton M. 31 

Thomas, Gorham Cambridge Dr. Thomas's 

Thorndike, Samuel Lothrop .... Beverly Mrs. Howe's 

Trimble, David Churchill [sic] . . . Baltimore, Md Mr. Edwards's 

Upham, Charles Wentworth .... Salem Mr. T. J. Whittemore's 

Vinal, Charles Carroll Scituate S. 10 

Ware, Darwin Erastus Salem H. 23 

Ware, Robert Cambridge H. 9 

Ware, William Robert Milton H'y 16 

Waring, William Henry Brooklyn, N. Y. . . . S. 27 

Washburn, Andrew W. Newton S. 10 

Wheeler, William Fiske Worcester M. 8 

Whittemore, Horatio Hancock Fiske West Cambridge . . . S. 9 

Willard, Sidney Boston M. 12 

Williamson, William Cross .... Belfast, Me M. 22 

Wright, Chauncey Northampton M. 28 



SENIORS 
1851-1852 

Alger, Horatio Marlborough H'y 7 

Anderson, Elbert Ellery New York, N. Y. . . . Mrs. Humphrey's 

Arnold, Howard Payson Cambridge Mr. Arnold's 

Blake, John Ellis Brattleboro, Vt. . . . H'y 12 

Bonney, Charles Thomas Rochester H. 11 

Bradlee, Caleb Davis Boston Mr. J. Warland's 

Brooks, Peter Chardon Boston Mr. Saunders's 



256 



Harvard Class of 1852 

Names Residences Rooms 

Brown, Addison Bradford H'y 7 

Brown, Henry William Worcester H'y 14 

Buttrick,- Edward King Cambridge H'y 17 

Canfield, Charles Taylor Ithaca, N. Y M. 14 

Cary, George Lovell Medway S. 15 

Chase, Reginald Heber Cambridge Rev. M. B. Chase's 

Cheever, David Williams Portsmouth, N. H. . . M. 21 

Choate, Joseph Hodges Salem H'y 21 

Choate, William Gardner Salem H'y 21 

Collins, Josiah Scuppernong, N. C. . . Misses Jenkins's 

Cooke, Alfred Wellington Cambridge S. 11 

Coolidge, Horace Hopkins .... Boston H'y 22 

Crowley, John Colman Boston H'y 17 

Curtis, Thomas James Boston Mr. Morse's 

Dana, Charles Francis Brandon, Vt H'y 22 

Denny, Henry Gardner Boston M. 27 

Downes, Henry Hill Boston H'y 8 

Dwight, John Springfield H'y 8 

Este, William Miller Cincinnati, Ohio . . . Mr. R. Torry's 

Fisher, George Huntington .... Oswego, N. Y H'y 15 

Gray, Levi Searsmont, Me. . . . S. 30 

Greenwood, Augustus Goodwin . . Boston Mr. White's 

Gurney, Ephraim Whitman .... Boston S. II 

Haven, Samuel Foster Worcester H'y 6 

Head, George Edward Boston S. 25 

Hill, James Seneca Northampton S. 30 

Hilliard, Francis William Roxbury H'y 6 

Hooper, William Sturgis Boston Mr. W. Warland's 

Horr, John Emory Castleton, Vt Mr. Smith's 

Howe, Francis Saltonstall Haverhill M. 7 

Hurd, Francis William Charlestown H'y 13 

Hurd, Samuel Hutchins Charlestown H'y 13 

Kimball, Jerome Bonaparte .... Blackstone Mr. Palmer's 

King, Benjamin Flint Danvers Mr. Lerned's 

Leverett, Frederic Percival .... Prince William's, S. C. . D. 13 

Leverett, William Cole Grafton Miss Freeman's 

McKim, William Duncan Baltimore, Md Mr. Mansfield's 

Neal, Edward Horatio Newton L. Falls . . . H'y 5 

Norris, George Walter Boston H'y 19 

Oliver, Henry Kemble Lawrence H'y 2 

Page, Calvin Gates . Boston H'y 4 

Peabody, George Augustus .... Salem Mr. Saunders's 

Perry, John Taylor Exeter, N. H H. 25 

Phipps, William Henry Dorchester H'y 10 

Porter, Josiah Cambridge H'y 10 

Pratt, Edward Ellerton Boston Mr. Guthrie's 

Quincy, Samuel Miller Boston H'y 12 

Revere, Paul Joseph Boston Mrs. Shedd's 

Richardson, Horace Boston H'y 4 

Rodgers, Edwin Aldrich Wells River, Vt. ... H. 25 

Sears, Knyvett Winthrop Boston Mr. W. Warland's 

Silsbee, Nathaniel Devereux .... Salem Mr. Saunders's 

Sohier, George Brimmer Boston Mr. Saunders's 

257 



Annals of the 



Names Residences Rooms 

Sprague, Joseph White Salem M. 9 

Stedman, Charles Ellery Boston H'y 23 

Stickney, Austin Cambridge Mrs. Stickney's 

Swift, Elijah Falmouth H. 11 

Thaxter, Adam Wallace Boston Mr. Fernald's 

Thayer, James Bradley Northampton H'y 24 

Thomas, Gorham Cambridge Dr. Thomas's 

Thorndike, Samuel Lothrop .... Beverly Mrs. Howe's 

Trimble, David Churchman .... Baltimore, Md Mr. Brown's 

Upham, Charles Wentworth .... Salem Misses Upham's 

Vinal, Charles Carroll Scituate H. 30 

Ware, Darwin Erastus Salem H'y 16 

Ware, Robert Boston H'y 23 

Ware, William Robert Milton H'y 16 

Waring, William Henry Brooklyn, N. Y. ... H'y 19 

Washburn, Andrew Auburndale, Newton . S. 15 

Wheeler, William Fiske Worcester H'y 14 

Whittemore, Horatio Hancock Fiske West Cambridge . . . H'y 5 

Willard, Sidney Boston M. 11 

Williamson, William Cross .... Belfast, Me H'y 24 

Wright, Chauncey Northampton H'y 15 



258 



Harvard Class of 1852 



MEN WHO JOINED THE CLASS AFTER 
THE FRESHMAN YEAR 

Names of those who Entered the Class in the 
Sophomore Year, 1849-1850 

Anderson, Elbert Ellery Hooper, Sturgis 

Blake, John Ellis Howard, John Clark 

Bonney, Charles Thomas Leverett, Frederic Percival 

Brown, Addison Neal, Edward Horatio 

Collins, Josiah Revere, Paul Joseph 

Dana, Charles Francis Rigg s > Thomas 

Downes, Henry Hill Rodgers, Edwin Aldrich 

Gardiner, John Sylvester Vinal, Charles Carroll 
Greenwood, Augustus Goodwin Waring, William Henry 

Names of those who Entered the Class in the 
Junior Year, 1850-185 i 

Curtis, Thomas James McKim, William Duncan 

Fowle, Robert Rollins Phillips, St. Thomas Jenifer 

Harding, John Trimble, David Churchman 

Leverett, William Cole Washburn, Andrew 

Names of those who Entered the Class in the 
Senior Year, 1851-1852 x 

Este, William Miller Horr, John Emory 

Fay, Edwin Hedge Spencer, Almon 

Gray, Levi Wallace, John Singer 

Gregory, Edwin Smith Williams, Russell Mortimer 
Hill, James Seneca 

Number of the Freshman Class ... 72 

Number of the Sophomore Class ... 77 

Number of the Junior Class 78 

Number of the Senior Class 88 

1 Fay entered Western Reserve College with the Junior Class to prepare for the 
examinations at Harvard whither he repaired in the Senior Year. 

Gregory, Spencer and Williams had passed the three previous years at Western 
Reserve and came to Harvard in the second term of the Senior Year. 

259 



Annals of the 



DETURS, PRIZES, EXHIBITIONS 
AND MOCK PARTS 

DETURS 

Deturs were awarded in October of the Sophomore Year, 
1849, to 



Alger 




Choate, W. G. 


Kimball 




Thomas 


Arnold 




Cooke 


Norris 




Thorndike 


Bonney 




Coolidge 


Oliver 




Ware, D. E. 


Bradlee 




Fisher 


Peabody 




Ware, R. 


Brown, H. 


W. 


Gurney 


Richardson 


Ware, W. R, 


Cary 




Head 


Scott 




Williamson 


Chase 




Hilliard 


Stickney, 


A. 


Stedman 


Cheever 




Howe 


Swift 






Choate, J. 


H. 


Huntington 


Thayer 







and in November of the Junior Year, 1850, to 
Brown, A. Collins. 



BOYLSTON PRIZES FOR ELOCUTION 

July, 1850 July, 1851 



The First Prize was awarded to 
D. E. Ware 



First Prize: W. C. Williamson 
Second Prize: A. W. Thaxter 



BOWDOIN PRIZES 



Dissertation 
First Prize: H. Alger 
Second Prize: A. Brown 



Dissertation 
First Prize: D. E. Ware 
Second Prize: J. T. Perry 



1851 

Latin and Greek Composition 
Latin Verse: R. H. Chase 
Greek Prose: H. Alger 

1852 

Latin and Greek Composition 
Latin Version: R. H. Chase 
Greek Prose: H. Alger 

260 



Harvard Class of 1852 



THE EXHIBITIONS 

[Only the Parts assigned to the members of the Class of 1852 are here given; the 
others, corresponding to the missing numbers, were delivered by members of other 
Classes.] 

HARVARD COLLEGE 



ORDER 

OF 

PERFORMANCES 

FOR 

EXHIBITION 

Tuesday, Oct. 15, 1850 

The Performers will speak in the order of their names. 

2. An English Version. From "The Agricola" of Tacitus. 

Henry William Brown, Worcester. 
4. A Latin Dialogue. Captain Phobbs and Mr. Golightly. From 
Morton's Farce of "Lend Me Five Shillings." 

Samuel Lothrop Thorndike, Beverly. 
William Robert Ware, Milton. 
7. A Greek Version. From Lacey's "Address in behalf of the 
Greeks." 

Horatio Alger, Marlborough. 
9. A Latin Version. From Mr. Palfrey's " Speech on the Territorial 
Government of California." 

James Bradley Thayer, Northampton. 
11. A Greek Dialogue. Old Fickle and Tristram. From Allingham's 
Comedy of "The Weathercock." 

William Gardner Choate, Salem. 
Darwin Erastus Ware, Salem. 
13. A Greek Version. From a supposed Speech of Spartacus to the 
Gladiators of Capua. 

David Williams Cheever, 1 Portsmouth, N. H. 

1 Cheever's name is incorrectly given as "William" in the original Programme. 

26l 



' 



Annals of the 

14. An English Version. From "The Oration of Lycurgus against 
Leocrates." 

Joseph Hodges Choate, Salem. 
16. An English Metrical Version. From Casimir Delavigne's "Trois 
Jours de Christophe Colomb." 

Francis William Hilliard, Roxbury. 
18. A Latin Dialogue. Scapin and Geronte. From Moliere's 
"Fourberies de Scapin." 

Reginald Heber Chase, Cambridge. 
Charles Thomas Bonney, Rochester. 



262 



Harvard Class of 1852 



HARVARD COLLEGE 



ORDER 

OF 

PERFORMANCES 

FOR 

EXHIBITION 

Tuesday, May 6, 185 1 

3. A Greek Version. From Mr. Everett's Oration at Plymouth. 

William Cole Leverett, Grafton. 
7. A Greek Dialogue. Wolsey and Cromwell. From Shakspeare's 
"King Henry VIII." 

Addison Brown, Bradford. 
George Lovell Cary, Medway. 
9. An English Metrical Version. From Lamartine's "Bonaparte." 

Elbert Ellery Anderson, New York, N . Y. 
11. A Latin Version. From Mr. Winthrop's Oration at the laying of 
the Corner-stone of the Washington Monument. 

Edward Horatio Neal, Newton. 

13. An English Version. "Eulogy upon the Conde de Campomanes." 

From the Spanish of Don Joaquin Garcia Domenech. 

George Walter Norris, Boston. 

14. A Latin Version. From Mr. Everett's Speech before a Com- 

mittee of the Legislature on furnishing Aid to the Colleges. 
Alfred Wellington Cooke, Cambridge. 

16. An English Version. From Klopstock's "Messiah." 

Austin Stickney, Cambridge. 

17. A Greek Version. From Mr. Calhoun's Speech in 181 1, on the 

Raising of Troops. 

Josiah Collins, Washington Co., N. C. 

18. A Latin Dialogue. Sir Anthony and Captain Absolute. From 

Sheridan's "Rivals." 

Charles Ellery Stedman, Boston. 
Thomas James Curtis, Boston. 
20. An English Metrical Version. From Victor Hugo's "Retour de 
1'Empereur." 

Horace Hopkins Coolidge, Boston. 
263 



Annals of the 



HARVARD COLLEGE 

ORDER 

OF 

PERFORMANCES 

FOR 

EXHIBITION 

Tuesday, October 21, 1851 

1. A Latin Oration. "De Virorum Illustrissimorum Mortium 
Narrationibus." 

Henry William Brown, Worcester. 
3. A Disquisition. "The Versatility of Mozart." 

Austin Stickney, Cambridge. 
5. A Disquisition. "Geneva." 

Elbert Ellery Anderson, New York, N. Y. 
8. A Disquisition. "The Islands of the Pacific." 

William Robert Ware, Milton. 

10. A Disquisition. "Geological Travellers." 

Thomas James Curtis, Boston. 

11. A Poem. "Three Studies of Nature." 

Francis William Hilliard, Roxbury. 

12. An English Oration. "The Benefits which the Spirit of Chivalry 

has bequeathed to the Present Age." 

Samuel Lothrop Thorndike, Beverly. 

14. A Disquisition. "Anti-Newtonian Heresies." 

Charles Thomas Bonney, Rochester. 

15. A Dissertation. "The Siege of Acre." 

Reginald Heber Chase, Cambridge. 
18. A Dissertation. "The Poetry of the Troubadours." 

Horatio Alger, Marlborough. 
20. A Dissertation. "The Diffusion of the English Language." 

Darwin Erastus Ware, Salem. 
22. An English Oration. "The Permanence of Poetical Fame." 

William Gardner Choate, Salem. 



204 



Harvard Class of 1852 



HARVARD COLLEGE 



ORDER 

OF 

PERFORMANCES 

FOR 

EXHIBITION 

Tuesday, May 4, 1852 

I. A Latin Oration. "De Artis Musicae apud Graecos Studio." 
Alfred Wellington Cooke, Cambridge. 

4. A Disquisition. "Japan and our Relations with it." 

George Walter Norris, Boston. 

5. A Disquisition. "Historical Accounts of the Speech of Antony 

over the Body of Caesar." 

Edward Horatio Neal, Newton L. Falls. 
7. A Disquisition. "Thomas Moore." 

Charles Taylor Canfield, Ithaca, N. Y. 
9. A Dissertation. "Athens the University of the Roman Empire." 

Ephraim Whitman Gurney, Boston. 
11. A Greek Oration. Ilept t&v aydovuv 'EWrjviKaJv. 

William Cole Leverett, Grafton. 
13. An English Oration. "The Value of the English Literature of 
the last Century." 

Josiah Collins, Scuppernong, N. C. 
16. An English Poem. "The Stone Face." 

Horace Hopkins Coolidge, Boston. 

19. A Dissertation. "Neglect of Tragedy among the Romans." 

David Williams Cheever, Portsmouth, N. H. 

20. A Dissertation. " Commerce in the Middle Ages." 

James Bradley Thayer, Northampton. 

22. A Dissertation. "The Dukes of Athens." 

Joseph Hodges Choate, Salem. 

23. An English Oration. "Unsuccessful Great Men." 

Addison Brown, Bradford. 

265 



Annals of the 



THE MOCK PARTS 

On the assignment of the Parts for the first Exhibition in 
which the Class participated, the members amused themselves 
by providing the Programme for the customary Mock Parts 
which follows. It is dated 7 September, 1850. 

The parts assigned by the President and Faculty of the 
College to the members of the Junior Class not having met 
with the approbation of the Class generally, the following have 
been selected from a host of volunteers by the committee 
appointed for that purpose. 

The following distinguished musical amateurs have gener- 
ously proffered their services. 

1st Violin Signor Famdatti (Waring) 

2nd Violin Silsbee 

Flute Richardson 

Banjo Sears 

Accordeon with vocal accompaniment, Page. 
Mr. Haven will also play ■ — upon words. 

The performers will speak in the order of their names. 

1. Greek Oration. LTepi rrjs aXrjdeias. 

John Taylor Perry. 

2. Disquisition. On the Immortality of Boot Soles. 

Horatio Alger. 

3. Dissertation. The Gospel of Mark as a guide for the Scholar. 

BONNEY. 

4. Latin Oration. "Quous-que tandem abutere patientia nostra?" 

Josiah Collins. 

5. Dialogue. Love of dress. 

Hooper and Huntington. 

6. Essay. Shaving for a beard. 

Peter C. Brooks. 

7. Colloquy. The Culinary Art. 

Cook, Fowle, Brown. 

8. Essay — at a Pun. 

Samuel Foster Haven. 

9. Essay. Finger nails as an article of food. 

Jerome Bonaparte Kimball. 
266 



B. Ware. 

Hooper and Wheeler. 

Josiah Collins. 

Fowle and Porter. 



Harvard Class of 1852 

10. Dialogue. Chapel Worship. 

Neal and Revere. 

11. Essay. Temperance. The character of rum (room) sellers. 

RODGERS. 

12. Essay on Earthquakes. 

Trimble. 

13. Expectatur oratio in lingua Anglo-Saxonica. 

A. Darwino Erasto Ware. 

14. Essay. The dangers around us. 

15. Discussion. The law of rotation. 

16. Disquisition. The Golden Fleece. 

17. Dialogue. The creature comforts. 

18. Greek Version. De Corona. 

King. 

19. Essay. Striking Sparks. "How great a matter a little fire 

kindleth." 

Paul Joseph Revere. 

20. Latin Metrical Version. "All in the downes the fleet was 

moored." 

Downes. 

21. French Version. "Scotts who have with Wallace bled." 

Scott and A. Wallace Thaxter. 

22. Latin Poem. "Poeta nascitur non fit." 

Gorham Thomas. 

23. Dissertation. Jenny Lind. 

Jennison. 

24. Latin Poem. "Alma Mater." 

J. W. Sprague. 

25. Disquisition. How long can a man be suspended and yet live? 

Dwight. 

26. Dialogue. The safety of our harbors. 

Gale and Haven. 

27. English Poem. The Eloquence of Beauty. 

Vinal. 

28. Dialogue. Rabbit Warrens. 

Leverett and Bonney. 
267 



I 






Annals of the Harvard Class of 1852 

29. English Oration. Verbosity. 

Horatio Hancock Fiske Whittemore. 

30. Dissertation. Personal Charms and an unlimited control of 

money sure passports to aristocracy. 

G. E. Head. 

31. Metrical Version. Diseases of the Throat. 

Quincy. 

32. Disquisition. Minor results of intestine wars. 

G. W. Norris. 

33. Poem. Great head and little wit. 

Coolidge. 

34. Disquisition. In vino Veritas. 

Dana. 



268 



CLASS DAY 






1 



CLASS MEETING 

On the twenty-ninth of March was held the Class Meeting 
for the election of Class Day officers. The hour set was 2.15 
in the afternoon, and Frank Hurd occupied the chair, with 
H. W. Brown as Secretary of the meeting. The elections were 

as follows: 

Thayer Orator 

Williamson Poet 

Alger Odist 

Swift Chaplain 

Upham Chief Marshal 

Trimble Assistant Chief Marshal 

Page Class Secretary 

Gurney 

D. E. Ware with [ Class Committee 

H. W. Brown J 

J. H. Choate President of the Class Supper 

Josiah Porter Senior Vice-President 

Quincy Second " 

Stedman Third " 

Fisher Fourth " 

Thaxter Odist of the Class Supper 

Neal 



Toast Masters 

Robert Ware J 

Addison Brown Chorister 

It was voted that a handsome Baton should be purchased 
from the Class Day Fund, to be kept as a memento of the 
occasion. A fund of $300 was appropriated for the purposes 
of Class Day, and on the motion of Oliver a separate fund of 
fifty dollars was appropriated for the Class Cradle, twenty- 
five dollars for the Jack-knife, and twenty-five dollars for the 
Class Book. 

A vote that the Navy Club celebration should be renewed 
was not carried, as the Faculty strongly disapproved of par- 
ties down the Harbor. The subject was brought up again 
later, and it was voted that they might at least have an ex- 
cursion. Sprague was chosen Surgeon for the occasion. 

Wheeler and Willard were both candidates for Ensign; on 

271 








Annals of the 

comparing heights Wheeler was found to be the taller, but he 
resigned his claim in favor of Williamson. 

Chauncey Wright and Bill Choate competed for the Jack- 
knife; it was finally given to the former. 

The Jack-knife was supposed to be awarded to the plainest 
man in the Class, but in the case of Wright, it was rather a 
humorous tribute of affection. 1 

It was Upham who suggested the idea of having the Class 
Pictures taken, and '52 was the first Harvard Class to set the 
example which has ever since been followed. But three in 
the whole Class of eighty-eight are lacking, — Arnold, Gardiner 
and Kimball. The pictures were of course daguerreotypes and 
most of them were taken by Whipple of Boston, the leading 
artist in his line; it is a significant fact that eighty-five men 
should have thought it worth while to make the trip to town 
for the purpose of sitting. 

The following program was arranged: 

The Class will meet in front of Holworthy at 10 o'clock. At- 
tend prayers at }/} past 10. Leave the Chapel at n o'clock. 
The hour following to be spent at the President's house and 
in marching. At 12 o'clock the Exercises will begin. At about 
23^2 o'clock, Harvard Hall will be opened to the holders of Col- 
lation tickets. Dancing will begin on the green at }/2 past 4. 
At 6 o'clock the Class will form again to salute the buildings. 
Meet round the old tree at about twenty minutes past 6 
o'clock. 

Chapel will be open at 11 o'clock for Collation ticket holders, 
at }/2 past eleven for the public. 

1 "At Harvard College it has long been the custom for the ugliest member of the 
Senior Class to receive from his class-mates a Jack-knife, as a reward or consolation 
for the plainness of his features" (College Words and Customs, by B. H. Hall, p. 267). 



272 



. 









# 



«#S 



i' 

1 ta 






i . .. 



'I 



% ■ > W 



■X' *»'■" 




• 






'-.■■* c 'h0*i*' 



- 




* -i_ 






/ 



Harvard Class of 1852 

Class Day invitations read as follows: 

HARVARD COLLEGE. 



The pleasure of 

Company is requested on Class Day, 'June ^5, 1832. 



COMMITTEE, 

C. W. Upham, Jr. C. G. Page 

D. C. Trimble . E. W. Gurney 

D. E. Ware 



The Class Day Exercises took place in the Chapel of 
University Hall. 



Class Day ended with the dance in Harvard Hall. The 
Tickets of Admission, printed on highly glazed cards, read: 



HARVARD COLLEGE 



Admit the Bearer 

TO THE 

COLLATION AND DANCE 

CLASS DAT, JtlNE 35th, 1852 



273 






Annals of the 



ORDER OF EXERCISES 

FOR 

CLASS DAY, 

AT 

HARVARD COLLEGE, 

Friday, June 25, 

1852. 



I. MUSIC. 

II. PRAYER. By the Rev. James Walker, D.D. 

III. ORATION. By James Bradley Thayer, Northampton. 

IV. MUSIC. 

V. POEM. By William Cross Williamson, Belfast, Me. 

VI. ODE. By Horatio Alger, Marlborough. 

"Fair Harvard." 

Fair Harvard! the ties that have bound us so long 

In childlike affection to thee, 
Are severed at last, and as pilgrims we stand 

On the shore of Life's perilous sea! 
Yet ere we embark on its doubtful expanse, 

A blessing from Heaven we implore 
For thy motherly care which has guided our steps 

In the paths that shall know us no more. 

274 






Harvard Class of 1852 

As we turn our last gaze on the time-honored courts 

That have echoed our footsteps for years, 
That have witnessed full many a scene in the Past 

Which fond recollection endears, 
A shadow of sadness we cannot dispel 

O'er the prospect will silently steal, 
And the sigh and the tear which unbidden escape 

The heart's deep emotions reveal. 

Once more, Alma Mater, our voices unite, 

Hand in hand as we circle thy shrine, 
And the song of our farewell we mournfully breathe 

To the friends and the joys of Lang Syne. 
To these scenes of past pleasure we ne'er may return, 

But, though guided by Destiny far, 
Our hearts shall be gladdened, our pathway be cheered, 

By the pale light of Memory's star. 

O, soft be the sunlight that warms this fair scene, 

When the dream of our youth shall have flown, 
When the counselling voice and the arm that sustained 

Shall have left us to struggle alone. 
May the wreath of fresh flowers which our hands have entwined 

And lovingly placed on thy brow, 
When the twilight of years darkly shadows our life, 

Be as fresh and unfading as now. 



275 



Annals of the 



ORATION 

Classmates, — The day to which we have been looking forward 
with such varying feelings, has at last arrived. Four years ago 
we met, most of us for the first time. Brought together thus 
suddenly, and knowing before so little of each other, we have 
lived since then in daily fellowship. The forms of classmates, 
which in the bewildered vision of our early college days were 
undistinguishable, have become separate and distinct. Those 
faces, which were then strange and blank, now speak, each 
its own story, reminding of friendships and college pleasures 
and bringing up a thousand treasured associations. To-day 
we meet, not as strangers, but as friends and brothers. The 
Mother that has nourished us has imposed the last of her 
duties; she waits now to bestow her blessing and her last re- 
wards. We are here in the interval to indulge those feelings 
of sadness, and joy, and hope, which the occasion cannot but 
call up within us, to review the happy years passed under her 
kind control, and to think for a moment, amid the festivities 
of the day that is to separate us, upon the Future, full of bright 
anticipations, but full, also, of grave and serious duties. 

You would not pardon me, if I should weary you, on this 
occasion, with any dry and labored discussion of topics, alike 
beyond our years and foreign to the true spirit of the day. 
Let me speak on subjects, if less weighty and less generally 
interesting, yet more accordant, on this our Class Day, sacred 
to reminiscence and to social enjoyment, both with your 
feelings and with my own. 

It is difficult to comprehend the truth in all its force, but we 
have seen the whole of college. As we look back over our life 
here, it does not appear like what we had expected; like those 
old college days of which we had read and heard, — that old 
Saturnian reign of fun and license, of collegiate demigods and 
their fabled deeds. This, in our dreams, was to be a place of 
unbroken happiness. Here, by some painless process, in days 
of unlaborious ease, a vast amount of knowledge was to be 
pleasantly acquired. The labor and anguish experienced in 
preparing for it, were to have no part in our existence here. A 
new power of comprehension was to attend the birth into this 
sphere, a pair of mental lungs wherewith to imbibe knowledge 

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in the air. The college course completed, we expected to be in 
possession of a very copious fund of learning; — not perhaps 
to have travelled the rounds of human knowledge, and to be 
beyond the acquisition of anything more, but to have arrived 
at a very advanced, and, to an unambitious mind, very satis- 
factory stage. 

We have been disappointed. Our life has been one of enjoy- 
ment mingled with irksome labor. We are here to-day, farther 
on in studies and in mental development than when we entered, 
and that is all. If we have the memory of many happy days 
and nights in college, and of many pleasant pursuits, we have 
also the recollection of hard work, of tedious recitations, and 
of early morning prayers. Those profound and varied acquire- 
ments, associated with the idea of a graduate, we find not in 
ourselves. It seems plain enough now, however inconsistent 
with our Pre-Freshmen dreams, that a thorough education is 
not to be obtained in college; that, at most a foundation only 
can be laid. The truth dawns upon us, that the longest life 
is none too long for what we thought to crowd into the four 
years here. 

Besides disappointments of this nature, there have been 
others. We have learned much which had not been expected. 
The required studies of college have been pursued with every 
variety of diligence and success, but whatever we have done 
or failed to do in respect to these, all of us must have been 
taught other great lessons, whose acquisition, though not 
inconsistent with the successful pursuit of college studies, is 
not yet inseparable from it and is hardly less important. We 
have learned much of our common nature, of the principles 
and prejudices that govern men in the affairs of life, and the 
manner of their operation. Of human nature in some of its 
particular developments, we have perhaps learned less than 
might have been gained in some other station in life; but the 
knowledge obtained here is more extended and valuable. In 
our small world of two or three hundred, we have one not too 
large to be contemplated in all its parts and not too small to 
furnish to the contemplation a great variety of character in 
widely different situations. We have learned something of the 
elements of success, of the nature and real value of public 
opinion, of its healthful restraints and its frequent injustice. 
We have, too, been taught these valuable lessons by experience, 

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on which all the great practical opinions of life have to be based. 
Friendship, in its true nature, has been revealed to us. Our 
minds have become more enlarged; our notions of ourselves 
and of others more just. We are better able to comprehend 
minds differing from our own. 

It is not necessary, however, to rehearse farther what we 
have learned and unlearned, in order to show how different 
college is in the retrospect from what was anticipated. Yet, 
in contrasting them, it is not meant that our present view is 
less pleasing than the former. The illusions of our younger 
days have passed away, and impressions of college life have 
succeeded no less delightful, only more sober, more enduring, 
and of a less unmingled character. Still, it is difficult to speak 
of college without falling into the old vein; and we shall doubt- 
less, in our turn, give to those who come after us the same 
ideas that the stories of our predecessors conveyed to us. The 
happiness of college will still be our theme, and our adventures 
will be related in that jubilant strain which immemorial usage 
has sanctioned. Even now, as remembered merely, and as 
related, these have a very different aspect. Words seem to 
give a new glory to them. And hereafter the effect of time will 
be added, which, obscuring everything else, shall only magnify 
the deeds we tell. 

It is not strange that, in the immature state in which our 
minds must have been at the remote period to which I have 
referred, we should not have comprehended the scenes through 
which we were to pass. College is a very singular institution. 
It can hardly be fully understood except by those who have 
lived in it, and they, though never forgetting many of its 
pleasures, are apt soon to lose its real spirit. Even those who, 
having passed through it, are afterwards most intimately 
connected with it, sometimes forget the tone, the real nature 
and standard of collegiate society. This peculiarity of college 
is not to be traced to the laws by which it is governed. These 
are what might be expected from the talents, the benevolence 
and the ingenuity of the gentlemen who frame them. With 
one or two exceptions, they might be made on a priori grounds 
by any man of requisite ability. 

It is the youth of its inhabitants and their always continuing 
young wherein the difference of college from all other known 
forms of human society consists. It must always bear the 

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peculiar stamp of their age and tendencies. Before we enter, 
we are too young to appreciate it, when we get through, we are 
too old. The same remark applies to each of the four divisions 
of college life, as to the whole. The peculiar pleasure of each 
year arises from the stage of development just then attained. 
No person can have a greater scorn for another kind of exist- 
ence than the newly-entered Freshman feels for the schoolboy 
life from which he has just emerged. His present state seems 
to him, on the other hand, the full glory and perfection of life. 
The contempt of the Sophomore, again, for that condition in 
which a few months before he was himself, is comparable with 
nothing. The sports and pleasures of the previous year he can 
neither understand nor tolerate now; his indignation must find 
vent on the innocent sharers in those puerile pursuits. So it 
is with the other two classes; each looks on the follies of those 
below with impatience and rejoices in its own. 

The adaptation of each of the four years of college life and 
of the whole to the youthful student, its corresponding so 
exactly to his age and desires, its being so natural an expression 
of himself, constitutes its charm. Hence the enthusiasm with 
which it is entered into, and the delight with which it is always 
remembered. Herein the reason that it is so often misunder- 
stood by persons more advanced in life, that its absurdities are 
so often viewed with unreasonable impatience and its faults 
with disproportionate concern. 

The collegian, as such, lives in a temporary suspension of 
most of the ordinary physical and moral laws. Many of the 
best established rules of society are rejected by him, whose 
fitness for people in general, for himself, when he gets through 
college, he does not pretend to deny. His theory of life is made 
up of propositions the most paradoxical and inconsistent. It 
has come down to him, however, from the earliest ages of the 
college world; it has received the assent of the fathers of his 
republic; it commends itself to him with all the force which the 
respect of ages and natural inclination can give, and it meets 
with his unhesitating approval and loyal support. As he is a 
human being his theory must needs be imbued with all the 
essential principles of humanity. He is, however, young. His 
ancestors were young, and, as such, were never otherwise. 
Little, therefore, can have been gained from experience, and 
the collegian must, in many points of his development, resemble 

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the men of the earliest periods. We find, accordingly, among 
his received ideas a number of the crudest notions of barbarous 
times. But living, as he does, in the broad sunshine of the 
nineteenth century, it is impossible that he should be entirely 
barbarous. The improvements which civilization has wrought 
in the world around him, have effectuated their changes in his 
form of society. Many of the most benevolent and peculiar 
ideas of the age are found incorporated into his system. 

It is a very strange medley. Withal, his laws are entirely 
unwritten. The basis of this society consists of maxims, handed 
down by oral tradition from ancient times, together with certain 
great first principles, truths that are self-evident to his mind, 
though in some cases, it would appear, to that of no one else. 
He seems, indeed, to have a hatred of all forms of written law; 
and it is probably to this hereditary sentiment, quite as much 
as to evil tendencies, that we are to ascribe his frequent over- 
stepping of the prescribed statutes. 

He has, it is to be remembered, a profound conviction, 
handed down from antiquity and ingrained into all his mental 
processes, that he is the victim of oppression. He therefore 
scents it from afar, and looks with suspicion on every addition 
to that beneficient code under which he lives. He is at fre- 
quent and considerable pains to show his admiration of inde- 
pendence. Interpreting too literally the words of the poet, he 
follows it with his bosom bare, nor heeds the storm that howls 
along the sky. The consequence is that he becomes a martyr, 
expiates his generous, but misguided zeal in various ways, and 
perpetuates the prevailing belief that he is under a tyranny of 
the most galling description. 

The various forms of civil and social law are as repugnant 
to him as the law of college. Separated from female society 
and surrounded always by familiar faces, he feels few of the 
ordinary restraints of social life. Removed from the direct 
action of the civil authorities and trusting to the protection of 
Alma Mater, he indulges in manifold unlawful freaks. His 
right to pursue this course, he is surprised to hear questioned, 
and it sounds strangely when he is criticised by the usual rules 
of gentility and propriety. In answer to such a criticism, he 
would admit the general justice of the rules, proceeding, how- 
ever, to lay it down as an axiom that a student is essentially 
different from an ordinary citizen, to be judged of on different 

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Harvard Class of 1852 

principles. His license to unhinge gates, carry off poultry and 
rob orchards, as well as to wear very singular garments, he 
would argue, in the language of the English House of Commons, 
to have been "always his undoubted right and privilege." 

He looks at most questions in a point of view entirely differ- 
ent from that of mankind in general. It would strike most 
persons as quite obvious that an individual who had gone 
through a long course of preparation, had exiled himself from 
friends and the world at large, and was at present paying out a 
considerable sum, all for purposes of education, ought to 
improve as much as possible the advantages placed within his 
reach. He thought so once, himself. Not so, however, now. 
A sudden discovery has been made that there are many objects 
more deserving his attention than the required studies. The 
struggle now is to learn as little, in the prescribed manner, as 
possible; and a recitation omitted by an instructor, or the 
successful delivery of a lesson which was never studied, are 
among the greatest events in life. 

The student's whole standard of conduct and character is ' 

very different from that of the world without, and with him "a 
moral character, above suspicion or reproach," may have a 
signification quite unlike its usual one. The highest crimes 
known to his code are meanness and dishonor; while some 
things, as severely condemned in society, are viewed with 
liberal forbearance. On the whole, however, it cannot be 
denied that the standard in college is high, and does its in- 
mates honor. If it allows some excesses, it is because its true, 
sympathizing spirit perceives them — to be allied with what is 
noble and generous. To whatever is really vicious and degrad- 
ing, to excesses that are not the offspring of those generous 
affections, which youth may be pardoned for not always limit- 
ing aright, it is distinctly and heartily opposed. 

And, in general, the student's life and manners are not things 
to be condemned or to be merely laughed at and treated lightly. 
There is something besides. We feel to-day that there is. If 
college is dear to the young, and bears in its customs the marks 
of youthful immaturity, it has also elements that enter into 
all after life, and bind together the hearts of men, never more 
strongly than when they are old. It is imbued with all the 
generous impulses of youth. It is filled with its warm sym- 
pathies, and beautified by its genial friendships. It is here, 

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the empty joys of childhood ceased, the feverish troubles of 
after life not yet begun, that youth walked under the hoary 
shades, and rested in the cool retreats of classic wisdom. Here 
he looked wonderingly into the mysteries of the human mind, 
and opened his eyes for the first time upon its grandeur; and 
here his own mind, awakening to the great truths of life, first 
received answers to its earnest questions. Here it was, that he 
took his first survey of science and was invited by nature to 
explore her wonders. It was at this time he began, with sensi- 
bilities all fresh and keen, his ascent up that fair eminence, 
whose sides it is the great business of our life to climb. At first, 
as he looked out, he saw little but the great beetling facts that 
hemmed him in. A higher ascent, and the landscape showed a 
broader and a clearer view. The mist that was spread over life 
began to be dissipated, and its common and ugly objects to 
assume their proper places and add beauty to the whole. To 
this, the true home of its birth and its development, the mind 
ever fondly returns. Its daily troubles and vexations vanish, 
and all its little follies are forgotten, or serve only to render the 
whole more dear. 

Of the essential benefits of a collegiate education, there can 
be no doubt. In our times, indeed, it is by no means so indis- 
pensable as formerly to success in literary or professional life. 
The tendency of our age is to render the means of instruction 
less exclusive, and distinguished and learned men who have 
never enjoyed a liberal education, are not rare. Still, collegiate 
education is in no danger of being abandoned. It will yet be 
necessary in order to place the student on terms of equality 
with the great mass of scholars and literary men throughout 
the world. It will be needful, in order to furnish that har- 
monious development of all the powers and that thorough 
elementary acquaintance with various branches of knowledge, 
that may form a good foundation for successful study in after 
years. 

In reference to our own system, it is unnecessary to claim 
for it that it is not susceptible of improvement. It doubtless 
might be made more efficacious, and it doubtless will be. Its 
faults are those which time, and experience, and, more than 
all, an increase of wealth, will correct. In a country so new 
as ours, it could not be expected that the colleges should com- 
pare in all respects favorably with the venerable institutions 

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Harvard Class of 1852 

of the old world. The wonder is rather that they should have 
existed so long and advanced so far. The period of struggle, 
the most purely material part of our country's career, is past, or 
will be soon. Yet, even during this time, how much has she 
not done for learning and the arts! With her growth, and the 
improvement in everything else, our Alma Mater and her 
sister institutions will keep pace. We may expect for them in 
future times, a more extended, more efficient, and a grander 
action. Their early sons will look on, and while they regret 
the passing away of the dear old customs, and beg those who 
would touch them to do it with a reverent hand, will yet learn 
to rejoice in their success. 

The changes, however, which the growth of our country and 
the genius of her liberty may demand in institutions of learning, 
will not make the instruction they give less broad and complete. 
The spirit of republican liberty is not inconsistent with a 
devotion to learning, as ardent and exclusive as has ever been 
manifested in barbarous and despotic ages. They misunder- 
stand it, who, in professed conformity to the spirit of the 
times, would abandon studies consecrated by the admiration 
of many centuries, — a delight and a storehouse of instruction 
to every age. If the years to come are to be more truly demo- 
cratic and alive than the past, they are not to be the less 
imbued with the spirit of classical learning. New and neglected 
fields are doubtless to be explored, but this will not demand 
a less assiduous cultivation of the old. Science and the 
practical arts are to receive greater attention, but they are to 
advance, not in opposition to the old studies, but in company 
with them. 

Liberty, let us not forget, belongs to the same Pantheon 
with the Muses. The true worshippers of the noble goddess 
cannot turn their faces upon her inspiring presence in vain. 
The benignant majesty of her mien must elevate and enlarge 
their minds. Her ideal beauty must refine their taste. With 
them the Muses and the Graces will find their readiest recep- 
tion. 

In proceeding to speak, Classmates, of the events of our own 
college life, I feel how meagre and unworthy an idea my bare 
words will convey. But your memory will come to their aid 
and bring up pleasant scenes of which I can say nothing. 
You will think of jolly summer days; of these old college 

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buildings with Avindows wide open, and Seniors reclining in 
happy indolence therein. Of convivial winter evenings, with 
all thought of care and the next day's recitations vanished; of 
pleasant confidential chats before the glowing grate; of familiar 
voices, and inextinguishable laughter sounding through the 
entries. You will think of summer nights, of the trees under 
our windows glorified in the moonlight and quiet voices coming 
up from under them; of lounging on the grass under their 
beautiful shade, when the labors of the day were over, though, 
alas, such is the rigor of the bye-laws, the poetic dream of 
Virgil is reversed, 

" mollesque sub arbore somni 
" * absunt." 

In many respects, college must have been a different thing 
to each of us. Our reasons for coming here were different and 
so have been our motives for study. We have looked at 
college, each from his own point of view, and have made it, in 
a great measure, whatever it has proved to us. We came 
together with very different experiences of life. With some of 
us, college was only reached by long and earnest labor, through 
struggles and many difficulties. Others came in conformity 
with the wishes of friends, rather than their own. Some have 
viewed it as the place for vigorous and unremitting study, and 
there are those among us who have made it that. In the 
progress they have made, in the mental discipline they have 
gained, in the applause of friends, in the honors of their Alma 
Mater, they have their happy memories of college and their re- 
ward. With others, its social enjoyments have had a larger place 
or have predominated, and their recollections are different. 

There remain to us, however, many things in common. In 
the matter of study, it is probably true that most of us came 
here with the intention of avoiding the common mistakes of 
students, applying ourselves diligently, and never forgetting 
the great object of our being here. High academic distinction 
flitted before our eyes; the first part was fondly anticipated 
by our excited imaginations. We gained great victories on 
this stage of imagination, on which, as Dr. Reid has since in- 
formed us, "more great exploits have been performed in every 
age than upon the stage of life from the beginning of the world." 
But our strict ideas gave way. Our chance for the first part 

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Harvard Class of 1852 

grew poorer and poorer every day. We lapsed into every 
variety of free-thinking on college duties. We became, in 
short, like every other class. 

But let us pass from these last bright days, far back to the 
Freshman year. College, differing from the world, as has been 
said, in many points, has, nevertheless, like the world, its 
period of adversity and discipline. Its glories and full fruition 
are not to be attained without struggle and mortification. 
After traversing all the regions of schoolboydom, we passed on 
from its highest elevation to the lowest place in college; much 
as we are stepping now, from the most exalted position here, 
forward to the lowest in active life. After all, Classmates, we 
may as well take up the first year tenderly. Perhaps there may 
be something which the college Freshman has to teach the 
Freshman in life. 

Four years ago, the converging streams of our lives met 
here at Cambridge. To drop the figure, we arrived and 
entered the Freshman class. I will pass over those two days 
of examination, the same dreadful occasion to us as to every 
class. Our vision, as we look back at them, is like those of 
Dante in the Inferno. In their lurid light, we discern a con- 
fused whirl of dictionaries, grammars, mathematical papers, 
the stern eyes of college officers, and here and there, the strange 
and unhappy face of one since grown familiar as a classmate. 

Our Freshman year was one of vigorous and, in some 
respects, remarkable development. We have scarcely wit- 
nessed anything like it since. The studious propensities, 
however, were by no means the ones which predominated, — 
this being but in accordance with that healthy and philo- 
sophical growth for which we have been eminent. During this 
early period of life, we indulged in those youthful sports and 
diversions which serve to harden the frame, and prepare it for 
future labor in the fields of learning. The vigor and animal 
spirits thus induced, soon began to find vent in various ways, 
transcending, at times, the limits which tradition, and custom, 
and the common law of college has assigned to Freshmen. 
Difficulties presently overtook us, and our ardor was some- 
what cooled. But, upon the whole, we gained a great name 
during this year; that this was not as students, in the strict 
use of that word, is partly explained by the fact that the early 
and unnatural glory, which the class immediately preceding 

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had acquired in this point of view, seemed to leave no chance 
for us. Preferring, like Caesar, to be first in any place rather 
than second at Rome, we were, in a manner, forced to win our 
laurels in other fields. The popular college poetry of that 
day is exceedingly rich in panegyric upon our course, while, 
in its exalted language, the authorities of the University are 
represented as viewing our gigantic development with surprise 
and dread. 

At the same time, for all this glory, we had to pass through 
the many little annoyances and humiliations incident to our 
position. With all the exaltation which the Freshman feels in 
really belonging to the University, in seeing his name in the 
catalogue, and in thinking of the glory wherewith these dis- 
tinctions must invest him in the eyes of every person he meets, 
— with all this, his life is in a great degree forlorn and full of 
disappointment. The glories of his former state, as oracle 
and sage at school, contrast sadly with his present "humble joys 
and destiny obscure." From the neighborhood where he was 
well known he has come among strangers. From the society of 
friends and relations, who viewed him as destined to be, in some 
way, very distinguished, and treated him accordingly, he has 
changed to the rigid and mortifying impartiality of college, 
and he deems himself an unappreciated and injured man. There 
are times, to be sure, when he forgets his troubles, and some- 
times, as he sits in recitations, or at prayers, the novelty and 
dignity of his position strike him with surprising force. The 
whole year is one of vicissitudes, of formation. In it the 
ground is cleared for happy times to come, but, considered by 
itself, it is not a happy period. 

The first striking event connected with our college life, was 
the Water Celebration in Boston, occurring a few weeks after 
we had come together. In the ceremonies of that important, 
but fatiguing occasion most of us participated with considerable 
pride. That, however, which makes it worthy of particular 
notice here, is the fact of its being the origin of our first class 
meeting. This was a successful one. But our second attempt 
in the deliberative capacity, was not entirely so. Here lay the 
source of our first woe. Happy would it have been, had that 
"forensis strepitus" so dreaded by the great orator of antiquity, 
inspired its salutary terror in our minds. 

The great event of our second Freshman term, of our whole 

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Harvard Class of 1852 

college life, indeed, was the Inauguration. That distinguished 
gentleman who had filled the Presidential chair for nearly three 
years, had found its labors too arduous for his failing health, 
and they were assumed by its present honored occupant, 
" nostrarum decus, columenque verum." We are the last of seven 
classes who, during a part of their college course, enjoyed the 
administration of the former President. I should do injustice 
to your feelings, did I fail at this time to express our remem- 
brance of his faithful and self-sacrificing efforts in behalf of 
the University, and of the kindly and paternal interest, which 
even our limited period under him served to show, that he took 
in all its members. 

Inauguration was a very great occasion. The imposing 
ceremonies of the day and the illumination and festivities of 
the evening, made a great impression on our minds. Nor was 
the pleasure of the day at all marred, for us, by the disturbance 
which took place between the students and certain officials, 
whom the tenure of their office, rather than their demeanor, 
entitled to the epithet of urbane. It would be treasonable in 
me to deny what is undoubtedly true, that the students had 
the right of it. The poetry of the time has described those 
events with all the fire which enthusiasm in a good cause could 
furnish, and all the justice which the tropical language of the 
day would permit. The scene of combat was elevated into a 
great battle-ground of principles. The old sons of Harvard, 
the worthies of the Revolution, were represented as hovering 
above the plain, bending over their children and animating 
them to the contest. And the Freshman class was stated to 
have rushed forward into the fray, with unexampled intrepid- 
ity, and saved the sinking fortunes of the day; — a poetic 
license, which the example of other classes with reference to 
themselves, rendered pardonable. However this may have 
been in point of fact, the exigency was one well calculated to 
excite the peculiar spirit of our class. 

The Freshman year, with all its absurdities, was a very 
beneficial one. Most of us got an idea of our true position in 
the scale of human excellence that we might otherwise have 
failed to receive. For all our turbulence, we had some thorough 
drilling; and we passed a year which has strengthened by its 
reminiscences, the ties of friendship since, and will afford many 
pleasing memories hereafter. 

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The beginning of the Sophomore year was marked by 
important additions to our number, — some passing the 
Freshman year at other colleges, others avoiding it altogether 
and thinking to leap at once into the meridian glory of college 
existence. This was much the hardest year in point of study, 
and during it our reputation in that respect improved a good 
deal. We still had, however, all the well-known peculiarities 
of Sophomores, so familiar that it would be tedious to enumer- 
ate them now. The world, happily or the reverse, is in no 
danger of forgetting what a Sophomore is. For the instruction 
of more remote mankind, college legends and accredited 
anecdotes abound. For those who live anywhere near him, 
the Sophomore in the concrete, with all his striking character- 
istics, is present. Tradition, a normal development, and the 
necessities of his position combine to make him what he is. 
College would not be college without him, while he, so natural 
a production here, would be a monster anywhere else. He is, 
after all, only an overgrown Freshman, — appearing to him- 
self, it is true, lifted infinitely above his former position, 
but to no one else; a Freshman, — destitute, however, of all 
the artlessness and humility of his earlier days, which made 
him then so pleasing an object to contemplate. 

During this year, our first division occurred, arising from 
those two societies (the Institute and the Iadma) that, taken 
together, embraced nearly all the class. This difference afforded 
some salutary excitement at the time, but, like all our feuds, 
it was never very serious and has long been a joke. The 
magnanimous voracity with which one of the societies after- 
wards swallowed all its old opponents, showed the good feeling 
that prevailed and was characteristic of our class. 

Our Sophomore year was rendered memorable by the fall 
of that ancient institution of Commons, which had been a part 
of the college ever since its foundation. For two hundred and 
fourteen years it had cooperated with the other branches of 
the University in satisfying the natural cravings of youth. It 
had ministered with varying success to the physical wants of 
succeeding classes, and had been the occasion and the theatre 
of some of their most famous exploits. But the increasing 
luxury of the time, the course of events, and the ruinous gener- 
osity of its purveyors, proved too much for this venerable 
establishment. Let us not be unjust to its memory. In its 

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Harvard Class of 1852 

day and generation it did great service. But when, at last, it 
fell, it was probably more regretted by those to whose view 
distance may have lent some enchantment, than by such as 
had of its dismal blessings a more recent recollection. 

The latter part of the Sophomore year was especially pleas- 
ant. Full throughout of its usual pleasures, its closing days 
partook of those wider ones that mark the last two years. It 
ended, leaving us closely united, and all ready for the good 
times to come. 

In passing to the second half of college life, we entered upon 
its really happy period. We had by this time acquired a good 
reputation as scholars. The class just in advance began to 
bestow its applause upon our efforts which formerly it had 
despised; and the rumor got about that we were considered, 
by those whose opinion was of the most importance, to be an 
uncommon class. This is a species of praise, which, we have 
since learned, is quite sure, at one time or another, to get in 
circulation about every class, — its source being, not in- 
frequently, the brain of some enthusiastic member. In our 
case, however, this eulogism was considered authentic, on the 
broad ground that, even if not uttered by the Faculty in point 
of fact, it would have been, had occasion called for it. 

The strong opinion of its excellence, generally entertained 
and expressed by the members of our class, has at times been 
the occasion of remark. Without attempting to defend the 
peculiarity alluded to on the principle that great and acknowl- 
edged worth renders self-praise pardonable, — without resorting 
to this invidious argument, we may say, that love of class is 
to be placed on the same ground with love of country, and the 
expression of the one is as proper as that of the other. Among 
the moral powers of the student, it takes rank as an affection; 
and when it is not manifested, either the absence of the ordinary 
faculties is proved, or a class and a position very unfavorable 
to their development. 

Our course during the Junior year was one, in every respect, 
to be remembered with pleasure. It was one of quiet and 
agreeable study and of almost uninterrupted enjoyment. We 
had been long enough together to become well acquainted, 
and close friendships had been formed. The manners and 
customs of college had become familiar, and studying was 
easier. The year brought with it a feeling of permanency that 

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augumented every pleasure. The memory of the past bound 
us together and two years more of constantly increasing enjoy- 
ment spread before us. The atmosphere was one of lettered 
ease, and dignity, and independence. The lower classes were 
contemplated with a comfortable feeling of superiority, the 
upper one with a sentiment of pity that it must so soon leave 
this happy region, and the ruling power with complacence and 
self-gratulation. We believed ourselves to be held in some 
estimation; we were, at any rate, conscious of deserving it. In 
reference to the few discords that occurred, their existing at 
all, testified to the healthy vitality that accompanied our 
harmony, and the shortness of their duration to its depth and 
solidity. No great events happened during the Junior year, 
and the golden days, strung on the homely thread of college 
duties, slipped quietly by. 

At the end of the preceding year, our college was called upon 
to part with one of its most honored instructors (Dr. Beck), a 
gentleman whose great attainments, whose accurate scholar- 
ship and admirable success in imparting this to others, had 
long reflected credit upon our University and upon the country. 

At the end of this year, she lost the services of another 
distinguished professor (Mr. Channing *), one who for more 
than thirty years had done his Alma Mater honor. During 
his long connection with the college, his genial manners had 
endeared him to all, while his valuable instructions had trained 
up some of the purest and most vigorous writers of the time. 
Our relations with him will be among the pleasantest reminis- 
cences of our college life. He retired, bearing with him the 
respect and gratitude, not of our class only, but of all the many 
classes who have enjoyed his instruction. 

The Senior year came in due time, a fitting climax to the 
whole. It is but just over, and there is little that I need say 
of it. How tranquil it has been, and how fully it has been 
enjoyed, I need not remind you. To the pleasures of the last 
year, there are always many things to contribute. As far as 
college life is concerned, this is its pinnacle. No person is 
possessed of larger experience than the Senior, no one has 
greater authority. He receives from all below him a marked 
respect, sincere, in some cases, though in others, it is to be 
feared, yielded only from selfish motives, in obedience to a 

1 Edward Tyrrel Channing. 
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Harvard Class of 1852 

custom which it is for the interest of each to maintain. Some, 
by this time, are tired of the restraints of college and anxious 
to go out into larger life. They rejoice in the nearness of the 
time of deliverance, and as they give themselves up to what 
remains with a more appreciating enjoyment, the last day finds 
even them regretting that it has come so soon. Others would 
fain stay here forever. Ignorant what is to be their future, they 
fear to leave the protection of college; yet resigning themselves 
to necessity, all the pleasures of the closing days are heightened 
by the feeling of sadness, the luxurious melancholy, that 
pervades them. 

But among the circumstances that have made the year 
peculiarly pleasant to us, there is one which must not be passed 
over, — that we have had to mourn the loss of no departed 
classmates. We have numbered at one time and another, 
no fewer than one hundred and five, and of all who have ever 
belonged to us, not one has been taken away. Few classes 
have been so favored, and as we think of the sadness that has 
sometimes mingled with festivities of this occasion, a feeling 
of gratitude must arise within us that our class day is darkened 
by no shadow from the wing of Death. 

As a whole, our class life seems peculiarly healthy and 
vigorous. It shows growth throughout, and that, in no one- 
sided direction. Though our early days were somewhat 
violent, 

" Techy and wayward our infancy," — ■ 

this natural effervescence soon passed away, and we showed 
a creditable attention to study. But our most marked, as it 
has been our most pleasing characteristic has been the harmony 
that has prevailed. Though we have been always an uncom- 
monly large class, there has existed as little discord probably, 
as any class has ever had. That we should agree always in an 
intimate association of four years, could not be expected. It 
would argue a degree of stupidity or of excellence which we 
are not authorized to claim. But we have not suffered our 
disagreements to make any wide or lasting breaches; and 
college societies, — often the source of so much trouble, could 
scarcely have made less among us than they have. 

In regard to societies, it is to be said that they are always 
attended with more or less real or apparent injustice, and there- 

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fore must need cause difficulties. These seem to be some of 
the necessary evils in college. It is a safeguard against them to 
some extent, to increase the number of societies, according to 
the different objects and dispositions of different persons. But 
this can be carried to a limited extent only, and is but a partial 
defence against the evils referred to. Besides, when they 
increase, rivalry begins; with all its train of unfortunate 
consequences. 

As to societies in general, it seems to be proved that no large 
number of young men could be brought together, as we are 
in college, without forming them, — with permission, if it be 
granted, if not, without. The only influence that can be 
exercised, is one calculated to control the tendency, not to 
crush it. If societies are not authorized, those which must 
spring up, being illegal in one point of view, will have a ten- 
dency to be so in others. Their character will be likely to be 
bad. At the same time, they cannot be permitted without 
some discrimination, or the college becomes the patron of those 
whose character it should not endorse, and is turned into a 
scene of political contention and society quarrels. 

We owe it to the liberal judgment of those whose authority 
it has been our privilege to be under, that our Alma Mater has 
been so free from these unhappy troubles, and that the char- 
acter of our societies has been, and is now, so high and honorable. 
Their tone is unmistakably higher than that of college societies 
in general. There is among them a law of honor, which proves 
more effectual in guarding them than the iron doors, "turres 
aheneae, robustaeque fores" that exist in some institutions. A 
view of good sense pervades them that is somewhat peculiar. 
It is to this we owe it, that our more serious societies do not 
always confine themselves to solemn discussions and grave 
literary labors; that they do not wear uniformly a face of 
austere dignity, forgetful of our age, losing sight of the natural 
disposition of youth, and "expelling Nature with a fork;" — 
that with their gravity, they mingle mirth and genial humor. 
It is this good sense, which in more convivial clubs recognizes 
limits, and does not suffer conviviality to degenerate into what 
is merely coarse and bacchanalian. 

Classmates, I have said enough of the past. Its good we will 
treasure up; its faults and follies we will leave behind us, or 

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Harvard Class of 1852 

will rise above. There is room but for one word with reference 
to the future. 

A wider and more serious life now spreads before us than we 
have yet known. No longer irresponsible, we are to plan, to 
act, to study for ourselves. That our efforts will meet with 
sympathy and encouragement, the faces of the friends whom 
we welcome here to-day, assure us. That we shall sometimes 
receive rough usage, that our lives will frequently be tedious 
and wearisome, the experience of others and our own reflection 
should teach us. Let it be ours, mindful of the advantages we 
have enjoyed, to carry into all our future labors and studies a 
manly and an honorable spirit that shall elevate and transfigure 
them. Our education imposes high obligations. It assigns us 
a place, at this time, when the world is travailing with great 
events, in that noble company whom it behooves to act from 
large and generous views; into whose hands the great interests 
of mankind are committed; on whose enlightened judgment 
the march of civilization depends. 

We entered here in the midst of a stormy political contention. 
As we go out, our country is again agitated by the strife of 
parties. Around our peaceful seclusion, the tumult of the 
world has raged. It followed us as we entered, and seemed to 
die away. It intrudes now upon our last moments, as if 
impatient of this delay. We obey the summons with gladness, 
for we feel there is something for us to do in life, and it is time 
we were about it. Yet these scenes cannot be left without a 
pang of regret. 

We go forth from this ancient college, the Mother of great 
men, our minds filled, and our hearts warmed, by her generous 
teachings; our noblest desires quickened, and our resolutions 
renewed, by the example of her earlier sons. She has nourished 
in her fostering arms some of the founders of our liberty. She 
has trained up many who in all the walks of professional life, 
in the domain of literature and of science, and in the haunts 
of business, have been the glory of our country. She sends us 
forth, a little band, weak in ourselves, but strengthened by the 
lessons she has taught, by the gratitude we feel for her, and 
by the bond that binds us together. Her blessing, we receive 
with reverent head. Her command that we prove worthy of 
her, and strive to fill the places of the great children whom she 
has lost, we hear and will obey. 

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Annals of the 

And in after years, Classmates, we will not forget our con- 
nections here, nor suffer our early friendships to be dimmed. 
When we are separated from one another, far away on distant 
shores, or scattered over our own land, we will sometimes 
withdraw 

" beneath the umbrage deep 
That shades the world of memory." 

Amid the dull drudgery of daily toil and the turmoil of active 
life; in calm hours of contemplation and in weary old age, we 
will think at times of these four green years. A beautiful light 
shall shed itself over them. Under these trees we will walk 
again with the companions of our youth. Within these ancient 
halls, we will meet once more. The old rooms, — they shall 
own with us, no new inhabitants, — shall shine again with the 
same light as in the years that are gone; the same faces shall 
gather about the hearth, the same voices shall fall upon our 
ear, the same merry laugh shall sound through the entries, as 
of old. Again we will come back and live over our early 
friendships; again pass through our happy college days. 



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Harvard Class of 1852 



CLASS POEM 

Four times the violet eyes of Spring 
Have smiled in blossoms, wept in rain, 

The Autumn thrice on purple wing, 

Has brought his golden offering, 
Slow sailing from the western main. — 

Since we were first transplanted here; — 

O Classmates! I do well remember 

How shrieked the bell on morning ear, 
Each hand how steeped in humid fear, 

Each face a pale, red, dying ember. 

Ah, what weak blossoms then were we 
Collars like double leaves, turned over, 

Some brought the flavor of the sea, 

Some brought the city's nicety, 
But I was fresh with country clover. 

Well have those blossoms thriven and grown 

Weaving their twigs athwart each other, 
Today the mellowing fruit is shown, 
One warm hour more — and all are blown 

From thy fair trunk, propitious Mother! 

When our young country called her loving sons 

To aid her in her life's extremest woe, 

Her stalwart farmers seized their rusty guns, 

Left mid the growing corn the patient hoe, 

And while the feverish throbbing of the drum 

Sent quicker throbbings through the heart — that day — 

Her soldiers torn from many a tearful home 

Marched through the green fields glittering on their way. 

But white-winged Peace flew back — O happy hour! — 
When the worn soldiers took their homeward track, 
From field, from farm what floods of welcome pour! 
The battered musket and the buff-knapsack 
Were food for tears as heart clasped loving heart, 
Twice blest the pleasure, sired by ancient pain! 
Yet had they one great sorrow they must part — 
Comrade from comrade, and ne'er meet again! 

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Annals of the 

So come we here upon this festal day 

That spans our long road like an arch of flowers 

Here break our ranks and each man goes his way — 

Our march is ended and the day is ours! 

Then let the day plead for me, if I fail, 

For words are heartless — like a tissued veil 

Drawn darkly over what my heart would say 

To you, my Classmates, on this parting day — 

Here have we strolled together arm in arm 

Beneath the elms; we've heard the midnight psalm 

Of winter in its branches, heard the tune 

Breathed through their young leaves by the lips of June, 

O happy evenings — when in Classmate's room, 

Bright island in a sea of deepening gloom, 

The flickering firelight sent our shadows all, 

To dance a hornpipe on the ancient wall, 

While some Prometheus stealing from above, 

Lit in our hearts a kindred glow of love! 

O pardon, friends, and judge me not awrong, 
Though I confront you with a trite old song, 
The muse has donned no ill-affected guise 
To spout an essay, or to moralize, 
No, dear old lady, it were much amiss 
To "sing the sofa" at a time like this! 
Then, pardon, though we trot a beaten course, 
On no winged charger, but a college horse, 
The poet-child, while dunces ride and roam, 
Sees splendid pictures in the fire, at home. 

The student leads a Crusoe life. The breeze, 
That feeds on ships, and grins in ghastly seas, 
To him brings booty; ■ — wrecks of ages dead, 
Driven on his shore, are wafted to his head! 
While like a Crusoe — happy Robinson! 
The night stockades him with its walls of fun. 
The dawn shall see him issuing to the air, 
Down the rope-ladder of a morning prayer. 
Of sea-born wrecks he frames a little boat 
Each daily timber gives it strength to float. 
Each bolt and trunnel makes him strong and brave 
To launch and breast it on the world's wide wave. 
Each day he toils and — as his nature bids — 

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Harvard Class of 1852 

He sleeps at night, or dances with his kids! 
Oft as he wanders where with ceaseless roar, 
Time's solemn surges rib the narrow shore, 
Burying in sand or deep in drifting weeds, 
All human grandeur and all human creeds, 
How like the grasp of sympathetic hand, 
Our kindred foot-print in the ancient sand! 
O kindred heart, that, wheresoe'er we roam — 
In earliest Argos, or in latest Rome — 
No age too hoary, and no youth too young, 
Glows in all faces, throbs in every tongue! 

When the Sub-Freshman quits his rural home, 

For college orchards, and our classic loam, 

The first bright hour that finds him entered here, 

Is far the happiest of the Freshman year. 

Then young ambition flies with painted wings 

O'er beds of roses — that conceal their stings. 

Shows him this stage and all the sweet renown 

Of doing honors in a rented gown. 

Fired with the thought and pacing up the yard, 

Again, again resolved to study hard, 

Some new-fledged Sophomore happening to pass, 

Shall say — "Oh, Freshman, cease to tramp the grass!" 

And with feigned eye of grand Proctorian gloom, 

Send the poor fellow packing to his room. 

There shall he sit, and ere his spirits fall, 

Write a proud letter, dated, "Harvard Coll." 

When, in the evening of the first long day, 
Our freshman hies him through the twilight grey, 
With hat and spirits crushed, and ankles lame, 
From the rough handling of the foot-ball game; 
When he sits down in that unfurnished room, 
Vast, damp and cellarish, — a dismal tomb, 
Feels in his sides the blows, while still his ears 
Smart with the cry of "Lurk" and Sophomore cheers, 
Feels that he has no friend with whom to speak 
And how that morning he was snubbed in Greek, 
Recalls the pleasant home, and thinks how blind 
He was to kindness there, where all were kind, 
Reflects that this is but one single day, 
Of some nine hundred that he'll have to stay; 
Search through the prisons! Hardly will you see 
Mortal more rich in wretchedness than he! 

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Annals of the 

Thus with our timid steps we journeyed on, 
Happier at night for one more day was gone, 
One more long day — it was a mighty strain 
That broke one short link of our prison chain. 
But time blew over us his breath of change, 
Faces of classmates grew less dull and strange, 
They brightened by much seeing! new esteem 
Ripening to friendship; did not that redeem 
The heart's lost riches back again — allay 
The homesick pain? Ye, who have felt it, say! 
Time breathed a change on outward vesture too, 
For though the leopard cannot change his hue, 
Nor yet the Freshman — mount on each a hat, 
Draw round each throat a fleur-de-lis cravat, 
Let, just as steeples rise from Christian leaven, 
Dickeys from collars spring and point to Heaven, 
And though by nature they are still the same, 
'T were hard to find them out or whence they came, 
So wore our first and doleful term away, 
Our second brought less penance, and more play, 
O pleasant freshman days, come back once more! 
O come in memory back! Ye are a store 
Of happy dreams, glad mornings, moonlit nights, 
And jovial midnight songs! ■ — of all delights 
Which Horace gave us taste of in those lines, 
Fragrant with blossoms and Falernian wines! 

Exit the Freshman. When six months are o'er 
He'll dawn on chapel through yon Eastern door, 
He'll dawn a Sophomore, that great age of flam 
Not much he learns, though much he learns to cram. 
That age of babbling tongues and lengthening ears, 
Of splendid neck-cloths and sublime ideas! 

Up Hollis stair-case let us take our way, 

The scene — his room; the time — the first spring day. 

That day in weeks of Cambridge rain-storms set — 

A jewel pendent from a rose of jet! 

At open window, when the bland sunshine 

Adds tender passion to her kiss divine, 

The young spring finds him; and I well espy, 

While in the quiet waters of his eye, 

Thought chases thought, like waves along the strand, 

That's not a text-book in his dexter hand! 

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Harvard Class of 1852 

No more he runs when Latin Syntax becks, 
Nor dances after that coquettish X! 

O ye who grumble through this world of sin, 
Release your casement — let yon poet in! 
Yon poet, Wind, who wandering all day long, 
Translates the pine-tree, cons the robin's song, 
Tuning each mellow tint, each silver tone 
To far surpassing music of his own! 
O man — he says — the breeze that busiest blows 
Stoops to the fragrance of the way-side rose! 
O maid — he sings — whom many suitors woo, 
Breathe passing love to all — to one be true! 

There reads the Sophomore, and his fancies stray, 
With those he reads of, wandering far away. 
In some romance, perchance, he takes a part, 
And clasps the heroine to his bursting heart, 
Or sees, where mosses stain the southern pine, 
Thy angel face, O our Evangeline! 
And the great elms rock sadly to and fro, 
Walking in shadows on the grass below, 
The sun's cloud-heirs in purple majesty, 
Blacken and fade and leave blank anarchy, 
The darkness comes, but not upon his eye, 
He soars and revels in the clear blue sky. 

'T was hard to come from scenes, where thus we soared, 

To graft the chalk upon the jetty board; 

The "dead" might testify to that campaign, 

'T wixt too much conies, and too feeble brain, 

They were the snow, — and we a rocky hill, 

They pelted, melted — we were stony still. 

Here, as the traveller on the king's highway, 
Muddy and road-worn, at the shut of day, 
Grows happy-faced, and reins his horses in, 
When the red curtains of the half-way inn, 
And sign-board creaking to the dismal blast, 
Sweeten the thought that half his journey 's past. 
We paused half-way, like him, and to the cheer 
Gave ourselves up, and drank our social beer. 
In speeches lived again the journey gone, 
And took sweet counsel for the morrow morn. 

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Annals of the 

That was our culmination! we had rolled 
To our meridian; carelessly had strolled, 
Like truant school-boys in a summer field, 
Where fancy beckoned, feet were swift to yield. 
We passed our noon, we took our downward grade 
Our faces deepening with a thoughtful shade, 
Still deepening as we rolled, and drew more near 
This dim horizon of our new career! 

That was our age of toil, for all essayed, 
To inter the Junior terms with busy spade, 
A year lived by! one gracious night in spring 
'T was thus I heard a theme-rid classmate sing: 

Robin, cease thy liquid note! 

1 cannot work if thou singst on! 
From thy confiding, crimson throat 
Such golden streams of cadence float. 
I cannot work till thou art gone! 

Soft sinks the twilight through the trees, 
The air is breathless — faint with balm. 
Clouds overhead, like fleecy seas, 
Roll stately on the western breeze. 
But all below is deep, deep calm. 

Shall duty now, with brow austere, 
Forbid me in thy love rejoice? 
Slam down my window! shut mine ear? 
Begone dull theme! I will revere 
The soaring angel of that voice! 

My gentle Junior, in the lanky hair, 

Whose matin labor and whose evening prayer, 

Is for the feet ^Eonian steeps to climb,' 

To lisp in numbers, and to make 'em rhyme, 

Whose words — like worms — slime every verdurous thing, 

And take such dreadful measures with the spring. 

Whose prose, long-hyphened trains of varnished phrase, 

Runs like the rail-car, over flattest ways. 

What was thine anguish, when, from corded ream, 

That ruddy hand drew forth thy pampered theme! 

Thy pauper thought, in tinsel garb arrayed, 

A bloomer costume on a beggar maid, ■ — ; 

300 






• 



" I , 











£ — -.» ■ 



fl 




Harvard Class of 1852 

Thy melancholy's sick and brainless brood — 
Abnormal spawn of ill-digested food — ; 
Thy soaring fancies, callow, bald and lean. 
Thy scenes from Nature, unlike nature, seen; 
Oceans of sentiment, common sense in drops. 
Stops without meaning, meaning without stops, 
Ideas, poor ghosts, thick huddled in the dark, 
How they all scampered at that pencil's mark, 
While, as if wailing their untimely close, 
Down either margin shrieked remorseful "O's!" 

Honor to him whom Juniors meet no more 
At sea-green desk, on yonder sanded floor! 
Honor to him, who knew so well to blend, 
The grave professor with the genial friend! 
Whose arrowy words in such quaint feathers came 
That there was pleasure even in his blame, 
Whose face, whence gleams of kindliest humor stole, 
Was but the affluence of a generous soul! x 

Sons of Melpomene and brothers mine! 

Shall not Pieria claim a single line? 

Slyly she laughed, when in slow serenade, 

Indignant catgut wailed the sleeping maid, 

'Till the crazed wind, recovering from its "blue," 

Put out our candles and our music too! 

Yet one request, Pieria, ere we go, 

O smile forever on the brass and bow! 

When round our yard, as you remember well, 
Long chains, in gentle billows, rose and fell, 
Pleasant it was, on early summer nights, 
To anchor there, cigars our signal lights, 
On those long chainy waves to drift and swing, 
To fire the pun, or sweet sea-song to sing. 

Alas! when Seniors, we sailed back once more, 
Each bark was stranded on a separate shore! 
There was no intercourse from coast to coast, 
No chains to ride on, and no evening post! 
As the old outcasts from the French bastille 
Wept for their granite walls and links of steel, 
We cried, — "O while our brief old life remains, 
Just give us back parietals and chains!" 

1 Edward Tyrrel Channing; he retired in 1851. 
3d 



Annals of the 

Four by the clock! Deep, in his easy chair, 

The Senior lolls before his sleepy fire, 

German to write and Werther to be learned, 

Rest in their cases still unsought, inurned, 

The Senior's eyes are closed! this fitful gleam 

Of sun through sudden cloud-rifts, is — ■ his dream. 

The hill-top trembles with the brooding heat! 

Sunlight and shadow drift along the wheat, 

Down yellow hill-sides and the vale between, 

March the young corn-ranks in their plumes of green. 

Far down a mill-stream wanders silently, 

Dreaming of willows, to the far-off sea. 

O summer sound — the ring of mower's scythe! 

O Christ-like flowers! — forgiving, while they writhe. 

Before that iron wing that swoops them down, — 
He sees them wither, turning sere and brown, 
O well he knows the mill-stream and the mill, 
O well he knows that great house on the hill! 
The great house on the hill — ■ the vine-clad door — 
The spreading elm — that seems for aye to pour 
A benediction over it, — the well 
With its long sweep — its bucket like a bell. 

Now, left behind the mill and glimmering stream, 
Through the wide door he glides in wayward dream. 

High o'er the portal of the windy hall, 

A musket, glowering from the panelled wall, 

Tells patriot stories ! Fifty years have flown, 

Children have come, have gambolled and have grown, 

In the old mansion, since their glorious sire, 

Marched home from war, and hung his fire-lock there! 

The blinded light falls greenly through yon room, 
The warm wind panting under sweet perfume, 
Joins with the audible gesture of the trees 
A drowsy murmur from the droning bees, 
There is the mantel like a shrine of flowers. 
The clock-case trampling down the laggard hours. 
The opened book, the music, and the bird — 
What something is there, still unseen, unheard? 
Like music, that, a child, we 've loved to hear, 

^02 



Harvard Class of 1852 

Now, half-remembered, dallying with our ear. 
Mysterious sleep! Thine is the kindly art — 
Though mountains intervene and bridgeless streams — 
Thou buildst a road from every heart to heart, 
Opening to them thine ivory door of dreams! 

Now on the sofa, snowed with summer white, 

She sits beside him, while the brooding night 

Gathering her black-winged myriads down the hill 

Sails slowly upward, sad, serene, and still, 

The moon-beams ripple in their silver flood, 

Over the steepled arches of the wood. 

Here pour their weltering argent o'er the field, 

There, on the mill-stream, drop a burnished shield. 

The stars swarm out; night, in her jewelled crown, 

Reigns sovereign — looks with heavenly patience down. 

Silent they sit, her soft white hand in his, 

And eyes drink eyes — at such a time as this, 

The rarest language is a mockery! 

The voice of passion lives from eye to eye! 

Silent they sit. What is it he would tell? 

Answer, O Man! O Maid, thou knowst too well! 

Silent they sit ■ — and now upon his ear, 

Trickles a soft sweet chime — I almost fear 

To tell you what it was — louder it comes, — 

And ever louder — like the crash of drums! 

Is it her voice, low-answering? Ah! too loud J 

It palls his spirit like a wailing cloud. 

He starts — he trembles — farewell moon-lit stream 

And thou, O Maiden! — 'tis a senior dream. 

Farewell, sweet dream and fond delusive hope, — 

'T is evening prayer-bell, and Mills 1 tugs the rope! 

The Senior has grown humble; on his face, 

The lines are marked more sharply, and you trace 

A more serene expression in the eye 

That four years since sparkled in revelry, 

He has grown wiser; in the dying leaf 

He reads no more a sorrow and a grief, 

But a far deeper joy; the flowers' decay 

Preaches of larger life that lives for aye. 

1 Mills was the College bell-ringer: see page 391, footnote. 
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Annals of the 

That antique language he has made his own 
Which God has hieroglyphed on leaves of stone 
Deep in the midnight caverns of the earth, 
The same he reads each day ■ — continual birth — 
Continual death, — but now, with inward eye, 
He views the glory through the mystery! 

And silent lips are preaching everywhere; 

In all the ravelled secrets of the air; 

In lightning, whispering to the listener's ear; 

In all the fitful phases of the year: — 

Its sun and storm, its seasons in their flight. 

The eloquent beauty of the winter night. 

Sweet wind, that, like a wand the summer wields, — 

The carnival of happy autumn fields, 

And the great history of his kindred race, 

Wearing the future on its God-like face! 

All life, save one, is mortal, and must tend 

Towards that Life whence it came, and there must end! 

One Life; — the same that in the hush of day, 

Breathes in the fire-fly one poor hour of play, 

And the same Life with which the heavenly spheres 

Roll the vast anthem of ten-thousand years! 

Classmates! though we've met to say good-bye, 

1 scarce can bear to say it; looking on 

The past, its white fields gleam so pleasantly, 

And the bleak future seems so drear and wan, 

'T is but a brief dejection! 'T is soon gone, — 

And let it come and go! there is no foil 

Against it while it lasts, there is not one 

Whose heart, though stout, will not sometimes recoil 

At leaving dewy groves for roads of dusty toil. 

We have walked on in friendship, — now we go 
From these old scenes, and to return no more — 
But other tongues shall talk, and feet shall flow 
Down the same steps and through the chapel door. 
We have been kindly dealt with — we deplore 
No comrade rudely snatched — and yet we crave 
Some absent voices ■ — some who trod this shore 
In kindness with us — hearts still warm and brave, 
Now proffer cordial hands from o'er the western wave. 

304 






Harvard Class of 1852 

The years shall melt like dreams, Classmates, this day 

So rich in heart and hope! when the sad star 

Shall shine through broken ranks on locks of grey, 

Telling of comrades that have soared afar, — 

O then come hither where youth's play-grounds are, 

For dear old memories, — like the plaintive strain 

That dwells 'round lonely ruins, — shall not jar, 

But pour a music sweet as silver rain. 

And the old vanished forms shall all throng back again! 

Farewell! Farewell! Ours is the widest wreath 

That ever circled round the old class tree, 

Ne'er have its leaves their shadows cast beneath 

On forms more frankly sad to part than we. 

Long hang the happy past in memory! 

Still glancing back, and still advancing on! 

Short be our partings, full our meetings be! 

Then, like old vintage be the scenes bygone, 

Bubbling from cob-webbed cells, but sparkling in the sun! 



CLASS DAY 
June 25TH, 1852 

From the Class Book 

The morning of Class Day ushered itself in with lowering 
clouds threatening rain. Our first scholar replied to an anxious 
inquirer in the third story that it would probably pour during 
the day, and the Class Secretary had in his possession an um- 
brella taken by mistake from the Chapel, these two circum- 
stances undoubtedly prevented any serious inconvenience 
from the weather. It is said also that the beautiful Iris cap- 
tured Jupiter called Pluvius and incarcerated him in the cave 
of Aeolus situated under Niagara Falls, and there kept him 
a prisoner for many days, thus very properly punishing him 
for attempting to interfere with us on Class Day, and the 
thunder-bolts forged by Vulcan were carefully laid on the 
shelf for another occasion. 

The Class formed in front of Holworthy at ten o'clock in 
full numbers and marched to Professor Longfellow's lecture- 
room in University Hall at ten and a half o'clock, where they 

305 



Annals of the 

listened to highly appropriate readings from the Scriptures 
and an impressive prayer by the Chaplain, Elijah Swift. Our 
Chief Marshal, Mr. C. W. Upham, Jr., then read an anonymous 
ode, supposed to have been written by Mrs. Sparks, dedicated 
to the Class of 1852. This ode may be found in its proper 
place in the Class Book. 1 After these exercises the Class sang 
one verse of the Class Ode and then proceeded in a body to 
the President's House where they arrived at quarter past 
eleven. Mr. Upham presented to Mrs. Sparks a fine boquet 
(sic) which she received with much pleasure, and acknowledged 
the next day by a magnificent one made up of flowers from 
her own garden. Some slight refreshment was spread before 
us, and lemonade was served in the old College Punch-Bowls 
presented to the College in 1701 by Hon. William Stoughton. 
After spending about half an hour at the President's, the 
Class, escorting the Faculty, proceeded to the Chapel where 
the exercises commenced at twelve o'clock. After music by 
the Brigade band, followed by a short and appropriate prayer 
by the Rev. James Walker, D.D., the Class listened to the 
oration from James Bradley Thayer of Northampton. This 
was a fine production. It sustained the reputation of the 
Class and did great credit to the orator. 

After a short interval filled by music, Mr. J. H. Choate 
arose, and after stating the melancholy bereavement which 
had prevented our poet from being with us, read Williamson's 
poem. Mr. Choate did as well as anyone could have done 
under similar circumstances, yet something was wanting, and 
that was the presence of the poet himself. The ode written 
by Horatio Alger of Marlborough was sung with feeling in 
correct time, and much better than it had been sung for 
several years. 

At two and a half o'clock P. M. the doors of Harvard Hall 
were thrown open and the invited guests entered the banquet- 
room preceded by Mrs. Sparks leaning on the arm of Assistant- 
Marshal Trimble. The sight on entering the Hall was 
extremely beautiful. The tables, extending nearly its whole 
length, were loaded with every delicacy of the season, and were 
ornamented with a profusion of beautiful flowers. The long 
array of pictures of good men departed which adorned the 

1 It is not in the Class Book, however, but may be read in "Hymns, Home, 
Harvard" by M. C. S. (Mary Crowninshield Sparks), p. 241. 

306 



Harvard Class of 1852 

walls of Harvard Hall seemed to cast down their eyes, to move 
their lips, and smile on the sight beneath as if desirous to 
partake of the dainties before them. Nothing further need 
be said of the collation than that Mr. J. B. Smith, the caterer, 
surpassed himself. 

The dancing on the green commenced at four o'clock. The 
lawn was in a better condition than on any previous year. 
Two cotillions and the Ladies-triumph were gone through 
with, when the hall was thrown open for dancing, and several 
sets were performed. 

At six o'clock the Class formed again to cheer the build- 
ings, which was done enthusiastically. At about half past 
six "Auld Lang Syne" was sung around the tree and bunches 
of flowers from the wreath prepared by the fair hands of the 
ladies of Cambridge were distributed to each member of the 
Class. 

The ceremonies of the day concluded by enthusiastic cheers 
for the members of the Faculty, and the audience dispersed 
highly delighted with what they had seen and heard. 

The evening was spent at Mrs. Sparks's, who received the 
Class with the greatest courtesy. A brilliant assembly of ladies 
and gentlemen graced the drawing-rooms of the lady of our 
beloved President, and the Class of 1852, the largest ever 
graduated at Harvard, the most distinguished ever graduated 
anywhere, were ushered into the world on that occasion for 
the first time, as liberally educated young men. 

Calvin G. Page, 

Class Secretary, 1852. 



Class Day Expenses 

Collation $200.00 Wreath for tree .... $8.00 

Band 150.00 Printing 8.00 

Cradle 50.00 Breakage . 10.00 

Knife 25.00 Batons 10.00 

Class Book 25.00 Bouquet 10.00 



307 



COMMENCEMENT 



Harvard Class of 1852 



A breathing space followed before the Commencement fes- 
tivities, which took place on the twenty-first of July. The 
exercises were held in the First Church, in Harvard Square. 

The President of Harvard College 
in behalf of the Corporation 
requests the favor of the Company of 

at the Exhibition, and at dinner in the 
Hall, on Commencement day, (July 2 1st ). 
Cambridge, July I$th, 1 85 2. 

Denny, and very possibly others, celebrated the day by a 
reception for friends. Denny's invitation, printed on a sheet 
of paper 6% by 4 inches in size, is worded thus : 

Henry G. Denny will receive 
his friends on the afternoon 
of Commencement Day, the 21st 
instant, at No. 2 J Massachusetts 
Hall. 

Cambridge, July 16th. 



311 



Annals of the 

niustrissimo GEORGIO-SEWALL BOUTWELL, ll. d, 

GUBERNATORI, 

Honoratissimo HENRICO -WYLES CUSHMAN, 

VICE-G U BERN A TORI, 

REIPUBLIGE MASSACHUSETTENSIS; 

OETERISQUE COLLEGII HARVARDIANA CURATORIBUS 
Honorandis atque Reverendis; 

JARED SPARKS, ll. d., 

PRMSIDI;, 

Toti SEN AT U I Academico; 
Allisque omnibus, qui in Rebus Universitatis administrandis versantur; 

VENERANDIS ECCLESIARUM PASSIM PASTORIBUS; 

Universis denique, ubicunque terrarum, Humanitatis Cultoribus, Reique Publics 
nostrse Literariae Fautoribus ; 

312 



Harvard Class of 1852 



JUVENES IN ARTIBUS INITIATI. 



Horatius Alger 
Elbert-Ellery Anderson 
Howard-Payson Arnold 
Johannes-Ellis Blake 
Carolus-Thomas Bonney 
Caleb-Davis Bradlee 
Petrus-Chardon Brooks 
Addison Brown 
Henricus-Gulielmus Brown 
Edvardus-King Buttrick 
Carolus-Taylor Canfield 
Georgius-Lovell Cary 
Reginaldus-Heber Chase 
David- Williams Cheever 
Gulielmus-Gardner Choate 
Josephus-Hodges Choate 
Josias Collins 

Alfredus-Wellington Cooke 
Horatius-Hopkins Coolidge 
Johannes-Aloysius-Colman 

Crowley 
Thomas-Jacobus Curtis 
Carolus-Franciscus Dana 
Henricus-Gardner Denny 
Henricus-Hill Downes 
Johannes Dwight 
Gulielmus-Miller Este 
Edvinus-Hedge Fay 
Georgius-Huntington Fisher 
Johannes-Sylvester Gardiner 
Levi Gray 

Augustus-Goodwin Greenwood 
Edvinus-Smith Gregory 
Ephraim-Whitman Gurney 
Samuel-Foster Haven 
Georgius-Edvardus Head 
Jacobus-Seneca Hill 
Franciscus-Gulielmus Hilliard 
Sturgis Hooper 
Johannes-Emory Horr 



Franciscus-Saltonstall Howe 
Jacobus Huntington 
Samuel-Hutchins Hurd 
Franciscus-Gulielmus Hurd 
Benjamin-Flint King 
Gulielmus-Cole Leverett 
Fredericus-Percival Leverett 
Gulielmus-Duncan McKim 
Edvardus-Horatius Neal 
Georgius-Walter Norris 
Henricus-Kemble Oliver 
Calvinus-Gates Page 
Georgius-Augustus Peabody 
Johannes-Taylor Perry 
Gulielmus-Henricus Phipps 
Josias Porter 
Edvardus-Ellerton Pratt 
Samuel-Miller Quincy 
Paulus-Josephus Revere 
Horatius Richardson 
Edvinus-Aldrich Rodgers 
Knyvett-Winthrop Sears 
Nathanael-Devereux Silsbee 
Georgius-Brimmer Sohier 
Almon Spencer 
Josephus-White Sprague 
Carolus-Ellery Stedman 
Austin Stickney 
Elijah Swift 
Adam- Wallace Thaxter 
Jacobus-Bradley Thayer 
Gorham Thomas 
Samuel-Lothrop Thorndike 
David-Churchman Trimble 
Carolus-Wentworth Upham 
Carolus-Carroll Vinal 
Johannes-Singer Wallace 
Darwin-Erastus Ware 
Gulielmus-Robertus Ware 
Robertus Ware 



313 



Annals of the 



Gulielmus-Henricus Waring 
Andreas Washburn 
Gulielmus-Fiske Wheeler 
Horatius-Hancock-Fiske 

Whittemore 



Sidney Willard 
Russell-Mortimer Williams 
Gulielmus-Cross Williamson 
Chauncey Wright 



HASCE EXERCITATIONES 

humillime dedicant. 



3H 



Harvard Class of 1852 
ORDER OF EXERCISES 

FOR 

COMMENCEMENT, 

XXI JULY, MDCCCLII. 



1. A Salutatory Oration in Latin. 

JOSEPH HODGES CHOATE, Salem. 

2. An Essay. "The Civilization of the Mediterranean." 

HENRY GARDNER DENNY, Boston. 

3. A Disquisition. "Changes in the Character of 

Ulysses by the Greek Tragedians." 

HOWARD PAYSON ARNOLD, Cambridge. 

4. A Dissertation. "The Bearing of Progress in Science 

on Faith in Revealed Religion." 

WILLIAM COLE LEVERETT, Grafton. 

5. A Disquisition. "Anna Comnena." 

CHARLES ELLERY STEDMAN, Boston. 

Music. 

6. An Essay. "Gradations in Shakespeare's Female 

Characters." 

FREDERIC PERCIVAL LEVERETT, 

Prince William' 's, S. C. 

7. An English Oration. "Cicero's Return from Banish- 

ment." HORATIO ALGER, Marlborough. 

8. A Disquisition. "Reaction of European Civilization 

on Asia." 

WILLIAM DUNCAN McKIM, Baltimore, Md. 
315 



Annals of the 

9. A Dissertation. "Religious Toleration of the Ancient 
Romans." AUSTIN STICKNEY, Cambridge. 

10. A Dissertation. "The Suppression of the Order of 

the Knights Templars." 

EDWARD HORATIO NEAL, Newton Lower Falls. 

11. An Essay. "Division of Labor as affecting Mental 

Culture." 

GEORGE HUNTINGTON FISHER, Oswego, N. Y. 

Music. 

12. A Disquisition. "Latin Poetry of the Christian 

Church." ROBERT WARE, Boston. 

13. A Dissertation. "The Iphigenia of Goethe compared 

with that of Euripides." 

EPHRAIM WHITMAN GURNEY, Boston. 

14. An English Oration. "Livy as an Historical Painter." 

REGINALD HEBER CHASE, Cambridge. 

15. A Dissertation. "The Empire of Trebizond." 

THOMAS JAMES CURTIS, Boston. 

16. A Disquisition. "Raymond Lully, the Crusader and 

the Alchemist." ANDREW WASHBURN, Newton. 

17. A Dissertation. "Self-Respect considered as an 

Element of Republican Character." 

CHARLES TAYLOR CANFIELD, Ithaca, N. Y. 

18. An English Poem. "The Death of Moore." 

WILLIAM CROSS WILLIAMSON, Belfast, Me. 

Music. 

19. An Essay. "The Poetical Element of the Scotch 

Character." 

DAVID CHURCHMAN TRIMBLE, Baltimore, Md. 

316 



Harvard Class of 1852 

20. A Disquisition. "Ancient Geometry." 

CHAUNCEY WRIGHT, Northampton. 

21. A Latin Oration. "De Corintho Capto." 

WILLIAM ROBERT WARE, Milton. 

22. A Dissertation. "The Travels and the Traveller of 

Goldsmith." 

HORACE HOPKINS COOLIDGE, Boston. 

23. An English Oration. "The Literature of Iceland." 

HENRY WILLIAM BROWN, Worcester. 

24. A Dissertation. "The Alexandrian Philology." 

ALFRED WELLINGTON COOKE, Cambridge. 

Music. 

25. A Disquisition. "Roman Hereditary Virtues and 

Vices." ELIJAH SWIFT, Falmouth. 

26. An Essay. "James Fenimore Cooper." 

WILLIAM HENRY WARING, Brooklyn, N. Y. 

27. A Dissertation. "The Prospects of Art in America." 

CHARLES THOMAS BONNEY, Rochester. 

28. An Essay. "Science in Russia." 

EDWIN ALDRICH RODGERS, Wells River, Vt. 

29. An English Oration. "The Pythagorean Theory of 

Numbers with Reference to the Problem of 
Science." DARWIN ERASTUS WARE, Salem. 

Music. 

30. An Essay. "Ethnological Studies." 

FRANCIS SALTONSTALL HOWE, Haverhill. 

31. A Disquisition. "The Services of Berzelius to 

Chemistry." 
HORATIO HANCOCK FISKE WHITTEMORE, 

West Cambridge. 

317 



Annals of the Harvard Class of 1852 

32. A Dissertation. "Thomas De Quincey." 

DAVID WILLIAMS CHEEVER, Portsmouth, N. H. 

33. An English Poem. "The Discipline of Life." 

FRANCIS WILLIAM HILLIARD, Roxbury. 

34. An English Oration. "Works of Fiction as Weapons 

of Controversy." 

JOSIAH COLLINS, Scuppernong, N. C. 

35. A Disquisition. "The Dramatic Power of Mozart." 

ELBERT ELLERY ANDERSON, New York, N. Y. 

Music. 

36. An Essay. "The Scientific Character of Pliny." 

JOSEPH WHITE SPRAGUE, Salem. 

37. A Disquisition. "Robert the Second of France." 

GEORGE WALTER NORRIS, Boston. 

38. A Disquisition. "The Prospects of Australia." 

GORHAM THOMAS, Cambridge. 

39. An English Oration. "Henry Clay." 

ADDISON BROWN, Bradford. 

40. A Dissertation. "The First Greek Philosophers." 

JAMES BRADLEY THAYER, Northampton. 

Music. 

41. An English Oration. "A National Literature." 

WILLIAM GARDNER CHOATE, Salem. 



318 



ANNALS 



THE FACULTY 

A few personal recollections of the Faculty as known to the 
Class of 1852 may not be without interest to generations to 
whom they are but names. 

Edward Everett was President when the Freshman Class 
entered College; as his tenure of office was within a few months 
of its end, he naturally made small impression upon the lads, 
although the writer remembers hearing one of the Class speak 
of the feeling of tremulous timidity with which he was ushered 
into Everett's awe-inspiring presence soon after his arrival at 
Cambridge, and the utter absence of graciousness on the great 
man's part, or of any effort to set the shy and frightened boy 
at his ease. 

The Inauguration of President Sparks is described else- 
where. "President Sparks," says Judge Brown, . . . "was 
modest and undemonstrative, though in appearance noble 
and impressive." His suave and sympathetic manner some- 
times conveyed unintentional assent, as in the case of the 
founding of the Psi Upsilon Chapter. The elect (twelve in 
number) in the Class who were members of the Alpha Delta 
Phi, resenting the proposed establishment of another Greek 
Letter Society, visited Sparks, primed with arguments against 
the scheme, with a view to taking the wind out of the sails of 
the Psi Upsilon promoters. The President's bland courtesy 
led them to withdraw feeling that their cause was won, and 
the doom of the rival club sealed. But not at all — permis- 
sion was granted for the Psi Upsilon Chapter, and, alas! for 
the members of the Alpha Delta Phi, it appealed to some of 
their strongest men. The students came in contact with 
Sparks but little, however, and his influence on them was 
slight. He resigned in 1852 on account of ill health. 

Dr. White mentions the attendance of President Sparks at 
Evening Prayers, after an absence of two months, caused by 
illness, and the warm reception given him by the students. 1 
The following account of the occurrence is given in a letter 
by William Robert Ware, of date 12 November, 1850, to 
Darwin E. Ware: 

1 James Clarke White, Sketches From My Life, p. 25. 
321 



Annals of the 

Mr. Sparks appeared at prayers for the first time, last Wednesday 
evening. I passed the word along to the Freshmen to stop after 
prayers and there was a tacit agreement among the Sophomores. 
The Seniors at first walked off, but seeing they were not followed, 
came back in large numbers. Students collected in front of the 
chapel, standing on the grass as if it were Exhibition day. The 
tutors looked rather dismayed at such an array and seemed to feel 
some compunctions at letting it pass, but they were none of them 
quite up to sending off a group of 250, so they went slowly off look- 
ing very glum indeed. At last the "talented but eccentric Sopho- 
cles" appeared at the top of the steps, enveloped in the classic folds 
of blue broadcloth, which he has rendered so famous. He stopped 
for a minute, then grimly smiled and descended the steps one foot 
after another, suo more, and joined the crowd below. All this while 
the President did not appear and we began to think that he, little 
thinking of our disappointment, had retreated to his office. Mur- 
murs of "Sold! sold!" began to be heard, "turn quoque videres stridere 
secretd divisos aure sttsurros." At last he appeared with Dr. Noyes, 
who saw what was in the wind and could not conceal his satisfaction. 
He was evidently smiling in his sleeve, while the President tried to 
look unconcerned, while Sophocles made no pretence at restraint, 
and rubbed his hands with delight. When he had about got to the 
foot of the steps we gave "Three cheers for President Sparks" in 
the true Harvard style. Everyone used their lungs with a will, and 
they told well. As Patty Cannon expressed it, "There never was a 
President got such cheers before, they all went up and round." The 
President walked slowly along in front and the ninth cheer left him 
just in the centre. Then he took off his hat and said that "he was 
glad to see us so cheerful on his return, but it was not in order to 
make a noise coming out of Chapel." Then he smiled and we laughed 
and gave him three more before our hats went on to our heads again. 
It is always pleasant to cheer, but this night the shouts were more 
unanimous and in better time than ever, and it is altogether one of 
the pleasantest occasions I remember. 

Judge Brown wrote that 

Professor Peirce seemed like a poet in a mathematical dream, his 
mind so preoccupied, as it were gazing at the stars. 

Professor Agassiz was a man of great power, inspiring enthusiasm 
by his magnetic qualities. He gave us one course of most interesting 
lectures on Geology, during which he conducted the Class on two 
excursions, one to all red pudding stone formation at Dorchester. 

Another of the Class recalls the not uncommon trick played 

322 



Harvard Class of 1852 

on the Professor during the passing from hand to hand of 
illustrative specimens. The mischievous Thaxter substituted 
a common pebble picked up on the way to Class for one of the 
professorial stones, and the narrator of the incident relates 
that he should never forget the expression on Agassiz's face 
when it reached him after having gone the round of the stu- 
dents, nor the angry words which he hurled at the Class, 
Thaxter's face meanwhile expressing entire innocence. 

Armed with a miniature sledge hammer [Dr. Oliver tells us], we 
went through the rural parts of Cambridge and adjoining towns 
hammering geological specimens to study their internal structure. 
One of these excursions was to Roxbury to see the pudding stone of 
that place. I had not seen it before, and to my mind it was perfectly 
clear how the formation occurred. Here were stones of a size varying 
from that of a walnut to an egg scattered throughout a homogeneous 
rock like plums in a pudding. It was evident, therefore, that the 
stones were embedded in a molten mass which in cooling had held 
them in position. Purely as a matter of form, however, I asked 
Professor Agassiz how the formation occurred, and his reply was 
"I don't know." This is another proof of how much ignorant people 
know. 

Another of the Class 1 says: 

The greatest of all teachers was Agassiz. His enthusiasm in com- 
municating information was boundless. The process was evidently 
a joy to himself, and the lectures are among the choicest memories 
of my college life. He was liberal in the use of the rare specimens he 
had gathered together. At one of his lectures on geology he passed 
round some stones with fossils, among them some trilobites, little 
fossil scales on smooth stones. I cannot think of it now without a 
feeling of mortification for the Class of '52, though I am not sure it 
was one of that Class who was at fault. But at any rate somebody 
through whose hands the stone passed must have set his thumb 
against the edge of this little film on the stone, and it was never seen 
again. The specimens were passed back to Agassiz, who received 
and examined them, and when he came to this denuded stone he 
looked at it. His countenance instantly changed from the intensely 
interested and interesting lecturer which he always was to one who 
had suffered a serious loss. All he said was "My trilobite! My 
trilobite!" The tone was one of dismay. It was reproachful, too. 
It was the end of the lecture. I cannot now think of it without a 

1 Judge Choate. 
323 



Annals of the 

sense of shame for my Class. He was indeed a wonderful man. I 
remember his taking us once down to examine the rocks at Nahant. 
His out-of-door lectures were great treats. 

Professor Longfellow [says Judge Brown], besides his instruction 
in Italian, gave us all our course of lectures in Dante. In appearance, 
Longfellow seemed the ideal poet, with perfection of manners and of 
gentlemanly bearing, faultless in taste, dress and elocution! His 
features finely modeled, and with a heavy growth of hair worn some- 
what long, and at that time turning gray, and with a pleasant kindly 
face often wreathed in smiles. 

Miss Crowley writes that her father cherished the memory 
of seeing Edward Everett, then Harvard's President, Charles 
Sumner and Longfellow crossing the College Yard arm in 
arm, and also, that Mr. Crowley recalled with pleasure Long- 
fellow's giving the Class "his version of Dante, as the trans- 
lation came day by day from his pen." 

Longfellow was considered something of a dandy, a fact 
that has been perpetuated in the lines of the College poem — 

Longfellow, Longfellow, Longfellow, fellow, fellow 
In blue coat and brass buttons 
Is Professor Longfellow. 

Francis Sales (H. C. A1835), instructor in Spanish and French 
from 1816 to 1854, came from a part of France near the Spanish 
border, and wore his hair in a long queue, both queue and coat 
collar being profusely powdered. He was an odd figure, but 
if his appearance were strange, his manners left nothing to be 
desired; one 1 of the Class of '52 writes 

I can see him now meeting a lady of his acquaintance on the street; 
he always remained uncovered while speaking with her, and his low 
bow on leaving was a thing to shame off-hand doffing of hats of that 
and the present time. 

Among our great teachers, [writes Judge Choate], was Professor 
Channing, to whom I think was largely due the fact that the Harvard 
English of that period was singularly pure and undefiled. It was he 
who was known by the boys as "Potty." He had a fine sense of 
humor, as was shown in his criticisms on our themes and forensics. 
It made no difference that the joke was on himself. One morning he 
hid himself behind the door in his recitation room in University Hall 
and the boys came tumbling in. The room filled up and one of the 
Class cried out "Potty is n't here." The door swung out and the 

1 Dr. Oliver. 

3H 







{£P§^ 









I 

Prof ,'adge Bn .ction 

course of lectin 
Lor 

odeled. 

I 

:es that 
Everett, then Harvai 
iner a: crossing the Col' 

■ ■ 
fell ^ .1. of Dante 

Lon 



reet; 

hat 

■ .- 

the Harvard 

as he 

- of 

hun 

It m ' )ne morning he 

The 




m ( 









\ 



% 







Harvard Class of 1852 

voice of our Professor of Rhetoric was heard saying "Potty is here," 
and the Professor himself walked out and up to his desk and sat 
down and proceeded with the appointed exercise as if nothing had 
happened. 

I remember that I was very weak in spelling when I began my 
courses with him. His usual form of criticism in such a case was to 
make a small "sp" in the margin of the manuscript submitted to 
him against the misspelled word. I suppose I failed to give due heed 
to this form of admonition in my first few productions submitted to 
him. At any rate, after the second or third of my papers so treated 
I found this method discontinued, and a large "SP" covered the 
entire margin of the paper from top to bottom. It is needless to say 
that I took the hint, although nothing was said. 

Felton affected an old cloak and fur cap, which furnished 
much mirth for the students; and Sophocles was always a 
noticeable figure with throat guiltless of "dickey," short 
trousers, blue stockings and unpolished shoes. 1 

1 Cf. pp. 331, 387 and note. 



325 



Annals of the 



THE CLASS 

Seventy years have passed since the eighty-eight members 
of the Class of 1852 were sent forth into the world to try their 
fate, but the chasm that separates those days from ours is as 
nought in point of time compared with the infinite change 
which has transformed all the ways and customs of life. So 
great is the difference that it may not be out of place to sketch 
briefly the surroundings in which '52 played out the drama of 
its day. 

The lads who assembled for the dread ordeal of the entrance 
examinations in the August of 1848 came by steamer, stage and 
railway from North and South, East and from what in those 
days was the Far West, — Ohio, gathering around a College 
as unlike the Harvard University of today as were the modes 
of transport by which they traveled. 

Cambridge was then a pretty, sleepy village shaded by 
over-arching trees, and bounded by green hedge-rows of lilac 
and syringa, sloping on one side to the lazy waters of the 
Charles, with its clumps of pollard willows, and stretching 
out by pleasant country roads to "northward-lying farms." 
In the West, approached on one side by "Love Lane," was 
Fresh Pond, a favorite resort, where the members of the 
Rumford and Natural History Societies collected specimens. 

Harvard Square was hardly more than a village green, its 
quiet little disturbed by the arrival and departure of the 
"Hourlies." These were the Boston omnibuses, so called 
because at first they went but once an hour; they soon ran 
more frequently. The vehicles were built on the pattern of 
a horse stage or omnibus with seats inside and also on top, 
their starting signaled by the ringing of a large bell kept under 
one of the seats beside the door, and their stopping announced 
in the same manner. The terminus of the route was in Scollay 
Square, Boston. 1 At one time there was a branch station of 
the Fitchburg Railroad on the spot where the Hemenway 

1 Addison Brown wrote his father, when urging him to visit Harvard's classic 
shades, "The omnibuses which start from Brattle Square will bring you to the door 
here (Divinity Hall) if you tell them they must, fare 15 cts." 

326 



Harvard Class of 1852 

Gymnasium now stands, but the branch was not successful, 
and therefore was discontinued. On the site of the present 
Austin Law School was a frog pond, from whose stagnant 
waters, as one of the Class tells us, he procured the necessary 
batrachian food for his pet screech owls. 1 

At the junction of Brattle and Mt. Auburn Streets, in 1848 
or 1849, was erected the hostelry known as the Brattle House; 
an enterprise of the sort was supposed to be needed in Cam- 
bridge, and President Everett presided at the housewarming 
given by the owners. It proved a failure, however, although 
the students who returned for postgraduate courses sometimes 
boarded there. 

There were no buildings on the Delta, except perhaps a 
small one occupied as a Gymnasium, and the ground itself 
was chiefly used for the annual Foot-ball game between the 
Sophomores and Freshmen, which took place after the be- 
ginning of the Autumn term. 

The well-known inn, called "Porter's," was situated at 
North Cambridge, and was not infrequently visited by the 
Harvard boys who desired a stronger beverage than that fur- 
nished by the College Pump. 

The only Cambridge bridge over the Charles River was the 
predecessor of the one now traversed by the Elevated Rail- 
way, and a toll-house stood on the Cambridge side, but no 
toll gate. Some of the Class kept their own horses, among 
them Dana, who drove in and out of town frequently (his 
mother lived in Boston) and finding it inconvenient to stop and 
"fork out" change each time, he made an arrangement to 
commute his dues, and by calling out his name was allowed 
to drive by without challenge; the advantages of the plan 
appealed to other students who availed themselves of the 
opportunity to pass through after dark, and by calling out 
"Dana" their dues were charged to his account. History does 
not say how Dana greeted his bill at the end of the month! 

The President's House, now known as Wadsworth House, 
was the old-fashioned yellow and white mansion, still standing 
on Massachusetts Avenue, opposite the head of Holyoke Street, 
although now curtailed of the fair proportions of its door- 
yard. The hospitable doorway opens into a hall running 

1 See Sketch of Henry Kemble Oliver, p. 126, ante. 
327 



Annals of the 

through the house with a door at the other end and the Col- 
lege Yard encloses it on either side. 

But this is a lengthy description of what were only the sur- 
roundings of the College itself, the little jewel framed in its 
filigree setting of interlacing elms. In 1848 the Yard was sur- 
rounded by stone posts connected by iron chains, a popular 
seat with the boys, whose wrath and lamentation were deep on 
their removal during the Senior year, and they requested that 
special mention should be given them in the Class Poem: 

When round our yard as you remember well, 
Long chains, in gentle billows, rose and fell, 
Pleasant it was, on early summer nights 
To anchor there, cigars our signal lights, 
On those long chainy waves to drift and swing, 
To fire the pun, or sweet sea-songs to sing. 

Alas! when Seniors, we sailed back once more, 
Each bark was stranded on a separate shore! 
There was no intercourse from coast to coast, 
No chains to ride on, and no evening post! 

As the old outcasts from the French bastile 
Wept for their granite walls and links of steel, 
We cried, — "O while our brief old life remains 
Just give us back parietals and chains! 

Outside Hollis Hall stood the College Pump, where the stu- 
dents supplemented the supply of water provided by their 
"goodies," and during an abstinence movement, that failed 
to meet with universal sympathy, tradition tells us that the 
Pump was blown up. 

The rooms of those who occupied the College Halls were 
simple enough. Students, many of whom worked their way 
through the four years' course, had little money to spare for lux- 
uries, but dreary indeed must be the spot which an open fire 
can fail to render homelike, and the stanzas of an Institute 
poem prove that the boys themselves found nothing lacking: 

On wintry evenings when the frosty breeze 
Sighs chill and mournful through the leafless trees, 
The students' fire pours out a ruddy light, 
Piercing the darkness of the sombre night! 

328 



Harvard Class of 1852 

Classmates are met, the social glasses ring, 
The pipes are lit, and college songs they sing, 
From mouth to mouth the everlasting puns 
Flash, and reverberate like minute guns, 
How flit their shadows on the dim old walls 
As with the gusts the red flame leaps and falls! 

The picture of Norris's room, No. 19 Holworthy, lived in 
the memories of those who loved its occupant as the ne plus 
ultra of a college chamber, and in the classmates' letters we find 
more than one reference to its comforts, the red-curtained 
windows, the old couch by the cavernous fireplace, the glow- 
ing fire and the many pipes. The "old clothes" men, one of 
whom was familiarly known as "Poco," who were a feature 
of college life, brought with them various articles of "virtu" 
to exchange for discarded raiment; a member of '53 tells of 
"the red Bohemian glass vases" thereby acquired, 1 while one 
of the '52 men long prized a pair of tiny bisquet dancing girls 
whose ruffled and voluminous petticoats might well put to 
shame the abbreviated "jupons" of the present day. 

The acme of luxury in chairs was represented by the one 
which Oliver's father gave him for his college room, an arm- 
chair with right arm so extended as to form a shelf for book 
or writing materials. Lent by him on graduation to Emmer- 
ton 2 of '55, it returned later to its first owner, and accom- 
panied his nephew, Thomas Edward Oliver (1903), through 
his college career. 3 

During Freshman year "Commons" were held in the base- 
ment of University Hall. The space was divided into two 
sections, a more expensive bill of fare consisting of beef and 
pudding being served, on one side, while the cheaper menu, 
served on the other, provided beef and pudding on alternate 
days. 4 Dinner was of course a midday meal. Many of the 

1 Sketches of my Life by James Clark White, M.D., p. 30. 

2 James Walter Emmerton. 

3 The chair, still in perfect preservation, is now in the Harvard Union, having 
been presented to the Society by Dr. Henry Kemble Oliver of 1852. The history is 
painted on the reverse side of the seat. 

4 In his speech at the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Harvard Club of New York, 
Mr. Choate says that the weekly price for the more elaborate bill of fare was two 
dollars and a half, the cheaper one, known as "Starvation Hollow," being two dollars. 
(Quoted from "Joseph Hodges Choate" by Langdon Parker Marvin, Harvard Grad- 
uates Magazine, September, 1917, p. 27.) 

329 



Annals of the 

students had rooms outside the College grounds, and boarded 
where they roomed, license being granted by the Faculty to a 
long list of the town residents of sufficient standing and re- 
spectability to warrant their position as landlords and land- 
ladies to students. 

The boys who composed the members of the Class of '52 
were all American born, and with four exceptions all of Eng- 
lish lineage; the four who were otherwise descended being 
Este and Revere, whose ancestors were of course of French 
extraction; Crowley, whose parents emigrated from Ireland 
shortly before his birth, and Wallace, whose Scotch father and 
mother came hither in 181 2. 

The average age of the entering class of 1848 was seventeen; 
the youngest was only fifteen. The lads were many of them 
the sons of farmers, and more than one was obliged to work 
hard and to "live lean," but always with a glad and willing 
heart, to procure the wherewithal to carry him through the 
college course, for to the youth of those days, Harvard was 
"the consecration and the Poets' dream," and a Harvard 
degree, the greatest asset with which he could set forth to 
seek his fortune. 

The Academic Year was divided into two terms, one from 
September first to the middle of January, and one from March 
first to mid-July. There were vacations of six weeks' length 
in both summer and winter, and two recesses of four days 
each, one in the Spring and one in the Autumn. It was cus- 
tomary for the Faculty to give leave of absence from Thanks- 
giving to about the first of March to any of the students 
who wished to provide themselves with funds by teaching for 
three months in some country District School. The number 
of those who availed themselves of the privilege was always 
large. 

The Entrance Examinations were held in University Hall, 
and lasted about eight hours. One of the Class of '52 writes 
that if he had been examined as hard "on leaving college as 
when entering, he should have left his bones in Cambridge." 
The legend survives that another member of '52 approached 
Professor Sophocles, on entering the examination room with 
the question, "Here, old Cock, where do we put our 
hats?" having mistaken Sophocles for the janitor, a not 
unpardonable error, for the professor's neatness of apparel 

330 



Harvard Class of 1852 

was in inverse ratio to his learning, and his unpolished shoes, 
blue yarn hosiery, abbreviated pantaloons and collarless 
throat hardly conformed to the student ideal of professorial 
attire. 1 

The Connecticut Blue Laws pale in comparison with the 
strenuous Rules and Regulations which awaited the entering 
Freshman. That the boys, for they were nothing more, 
should find perennial satisfaction, unalloyed by fines, in carv- 
ing their names on the benches, was not perhaps strange. 
They were strictly forbidden to smoke outside their rooms and 
the sinful wight who lay coatless and smoking on the grass on 
Sunday afternoon at an hour when the godly were passing by 
on their way to church, no doubt met with the chastisement 
his heinous offence deserved. 

Nevertheless the observation of the Sabbath seemed very 
lax to one fresh from the more Orthodox atmosphere of Am- 
herst, as may be seen from a letter written by Addison Brown 
to his father in September, 1849. He had passed his Fresh- 
man year at Amherst. 

Sunday is not very strictly kept by the students. Most themes 
are written on Sunday. Nine tenths of the students study or write 
as they choose as on other days, indeed the day is not in general 
considered of any binding importance. 

The difference in a religious point of view between the habits of 
thought here and at Amherst is remarkable. There are not more 
than six professors of religion among all the students, and not a 
religious meeting from the beginning of the term to the close, except 
the Chapel service. 

In many of the poems written for meetings of different 
Societies, reference is made to the Rebellion Tree, situated 
near the College Pump, around which it was usual for Sopho- 
mores to hold a midnight dance on New Year's Eve, 2 which 
sometimes led to serious and rusticating consequences, as did 
the custom of "groaning" at Class-meetings for tutors who 
failed to meet with the approval of their pupils. 

The "hazing" of Freshmen was then in full force; descrip- 

1 Cf. pp. 325, 387 and note. 

2 See Poem delivered before the Institute of 1770, p. 386, post; and Sketches of 
my Life by Dr. White (p. 25), "1855, Jan. 1. A dance around the Rebellion Tree last 
night." 

331 



Annals of the 

tions may be found in the poem read 1 before the Iadma 
Society by Thaxter. 

The relations between the Students and the Professors and 
Tutors in the days of '52 were almost those which exist in a 
large family circle; all were known to one another, and the 
attitude of the boys toward their elders and betters was that 
of mischievous, and sometimes affectionate rebellion, although 
for some reason their feeling toward their tutors was occa- 
sionally really virulent, perhaps because they resented the 
authority exercised by men who were often only a year or 
two older than themselves. The unfortunate Josiah Shat- 
tuck Hartwell 2 was the object of their especial rancor, but for 
Child they cherished no unkindness. 

The College bell was rung twelve times, daily, the ringer 
being yclept Mills; 3 the first call of course was for compul- 
sory prayers, and at the jocund hour of 6 a. m. winter and 
summer, the unwilling lads were dragged from their morning 
slumbers. One of Stedman's best drawings represents them 
storming up the stairs of University 4 in their effort to get in 
before the closing of the doors, the signal for which was the 
rising of the clergyman, whereupon the monitors made a 
record of all present, and we can scarcely wonder that fre- 
quent admonitions were delivered for undignified and slum- 
brous attitudes on the part of the sleepy boys, or even that 
they sometimes kept themselves awake by unseemly noises 
of the feet. 

Francis and Noyes were the divines who officiated at the 
matutinal orisons, and perhaps found it as hard to tear them- 
selves from the arms of Morpheus as did their hearers, for it 
is related that on one occasion when invoking the Deity, 
Dr. Francis was heard to pray "that the intemperate may 
become temperate and the industrious dustrious." There 
were afternoon prayers also. Addison Brown played the 
College organ for two years while at Cambridge, and both he 
and Williamson sang in the College Choir. 

Horatio Alger was President's Freshman; his duties were to 
do the President's errands, in return for which a room was 

1 See Iadma Society, p. 369, post. 

2 H. C. 1844 — First Scholar. He subsequently dropped the name of Josiah. 

3 See Institute Poem and footnote on p. 391, post. 

4 The Chapel was then in the present Faculty Room on the second floor of Uni- 
versity Hall. 

332 



Harvard Class of 1852 

assigned to him without charge, and he may have received 
other perquisites as well. 1 

An effort was made in November, 1849, to introduce the 
wearing of mortar board caps. 2 Page seems to have been 
chief instigator, and many adopted the headgear, but it was 
soon abandoned on account of its extreme discomfort. 

Fashion then as now, was king, and ordained at that time 
that young men should wear shawls instead of overcoats; 
long boots were universal and so difficult to draw on that an 
especial instrument was invented to facilitate the process. 
The protection afforded by the long boots was no doubt nec- 
essary, for Cambridge mud and dust have ever been pro- 
verbial. 

"We used to take a tramp over the country," Norris writes 
to one of the Class after graduation, and "methinks I can 
scent even now the richly-compounded dust we inhaled and 
can feel the exquisite 'sqush' with which our polished(?) 
boots sank deeply in the mire." 

Deturs were assigned in November of the Sophomore year 
to thirty-four members of the Class, the prizes awarded con- 
sisting of handsome editions of well-known authors, and at 
the end of the Sophomore year, on 12 July, 1850, a Class 
Supper was held, to which Coolidge contributed an Ode. The 
allusions to the Professors may be easily recognized. 



ODE 

Air, — Auld Lang Syne 

Our work is done, and now we bow 

Before great Bacchus' shrine; 
Thanksgiving to the jolly god, 
The patron of the vine! 

And Momus, mayst thou too preside 

O'er this our maiden feast; 
For all the cares that we have borne 
With Soph'more days have ceased. 

1 Memories of a Hundred Years by Edward Everett Hale, ii. 234. 

2 The firm of Bent and Bush, prominent hatters of the day, whose firm name is 
still in existence, provided the members of the Class with the caps, sending out an 
emissary who took the measurement of the individual heads for their new apparel. 

333 



Annals of the 

To Mathematics now we bid 

A long and last farewell; 
For Curves and Functions now defunct 
We sound a parting knell! 

For Benny's Curves have never Peirced 

The brains of mortal man, 
And to digest them, though they're Cooked, 
We doubt if any can. 

No more in Learning's devious ways 

Shall we be Beckoned on; 
We've laid all hope on that score down, 
Just as the Chase's begun. 

No more shall Hartwell at the sound 

Of hurdy-gurdies run, 
But quietly remain at home, 
And tend that darling son. 

No more as Soph'mores shall we cause 

The Freshman's heart to quake, 
But now as Juniors dignified 
The ladies' hearts we '11 break. 

And if they yield we '11 find excuse, 

For we still do the same; 
We love the Sparks as well as they, 
The diff'rence 's but in name. 

We 're half way up the golden hill 

Of these our College days, 
The star of Friendship cheers us on 
With brilliant gladsome rays. 

And when at length we're forced to part 

And different paths pursue, 
Let's ne'er forget our College days, 
And the Class of '52. 

Whene'er in after life we meet, 

And grasp a classmate's hand, 
The thoughts of earlier days shall rise 
At Memory's glad command. 

Let us then strive our Class to bind 

In friendship firm and true, 
That after years sweet thoughts may bring 
Of the Class of '52. 

334 



Harvard Class of 1852 

During May and October of the Junior and Senior years, 
were held the Exhibitions, which Mr. Rantoul aptly terms 
"a sort of dress rehearsal for Commencement ... to test 
their quality before an audience in the Chapel." x The parts 
were assigned to eight members of each Class, respectively, 
and the exercises took place in the Chapel. 

Kossuth's arrival in Boston in April, 1852, was celebrated 
by a half-holiday, that the students might go in to see him. 2 
There was discussion as to whether he should be officially 
received at Harvard, the matter being finally settled by a 
message from the Common Council of Cambridge to the effect 
that if the Faculty did not invite him to visit the College, they 
should offer him the hospitality of the City. Kossuth was 
therefore bidden to attend the Exhibition, which was held on 
the fourth of May in the Chapel, and he arrived during the 
closing oration delivered by Addison Brown on "Unsuccess- 
ful Great Men." Kossuth was introduced by President 
Sparks, addressed the company in English, and departed after 
the applause had subsided, whereupon Brown finished his 
oration. 3 

Mrs. Charles Russell Lowell gave on the evening of the day 
of the Exhibition a reception at her house on Quincy Street 
for "the Hungarians," as they are called in the invitation, to 
which many of the students were asked, and Kossuth was the 
object of much hero worship. 

In July, at the end of the Senior year, twenty-five of the 
Class shared in a dinner at the Winthrop House; the bill of 
fare for the occasion is decorated with garlands of pink roses, 
and offers a liberal list of fifty different viands! 

It was during the Senior year that rooms in the East Entry 
of Holworthy were occupied by a band of good comrades, 
whose affection for one another ended only with their lives. 
Coolidge and Dana, the two Choates, Norris and Waring, 
Williamson and Thayer, Stedman and Robert Ware, Ware 

1 Personal Recollections by Robert S. Rantoul, p. 63. 

2 See Sketches from my Life by Dr. James C. White, p. 37. 

3 The description given by Mr. Robert S. Rantoul in his Reminiscences (p. 63) of 
Kossuth's Reception is so pretty that we regret it is not authentic, but Mr. Choate's 
part in the Exhibition had been delivered before Kossuth's arrival, and his Latin 
address to the Hungarian is a charming fiction. Mr. Choate and his brother, Judge 
Choate, were greatly amused by the undeserved honors attributed to him by Mr. 
Rantoul's facile pen. 

335 



Annals of the 

No. I and No. 3 were bracketed together in "chummage" 
and their letters in after years show how close and long- 
remembered was the tie. 

Sadly enough did Robert Ware write to Williamson of 
their former quarters in the September of 1852: "the dear 
old fourth story, it's very much changed, they've white- 
washed over Charley's [Stedman's] pictures on the walls, and 
those poosky seniors rule supreme over the East Entry . . . 
I miss you and Jim [Thayer] and Dave [Trimble] most of all." 

Their nicknames for one another were varied: the Choates 
were called by the inevitable "Joe and Bill," Norris was 
known as "Noddy" and Waring as "Fandatte" and '"'Fan," 
a sobriquet arising from the accidental transposition of one of 
the boys who intended to dub him Dam Fatty, and stumbled 
into Fam Datti instead. Bill Williamson was the "Belfast 
Giant" and "Patrick," while W. R. Ware was universally 
known as "Billy Bobby." 

Many of the Class were fascinated with the approved 
method of M. Richter, who invented machinery to aid in the 
drawing of landscapes and of faces, and Bill Choate writes 
that he and Norris therein wasted a large part of their Senior 
year. 

The announcement of the Commencement Parts was fol- 
lowed by the issue of the Mock Parts, which may be found on 
a previous page, with the account of the Class Meeting. 

As we turn the pages of the Class Book, the pictured faces 
look out at us, perennially young and full of hope, even as 
they looked out on "that new world which is the old" in those 
long-past days of July, 1852. 

The account of Class Day has been given 1 as related by the 
Secretary, and here our story of the Class in its entirety ends. 

To but few of the Class of '52 was it granted to find the pot 
of gold at the rainbow's end; not all of them "hitched their 
wagon to a star," but we think there was none who in after 
.life, failed wholly to hear some whisper of 

"the voices of the 'Good and Great' 
Who walked beneath these shades, whose lives sublime 
Stand monuments along the stream of time. 
Come up with memories of long ago 

1 See pp. 305-307, ante. 
336 



Harvard Class of 1852 

And on our lives their sacred lustre throw; — 
Bidding us gird our spirits for the strife 
Which waits us on the battle-field of life." 

Eager, but with a deep religious faith, the more serious of the 
Class of '52 looked forward to the life that lay before them, 
almost as the knights of old watched beside their armor, and 
thus it was that their great White Mother 

"Sent them forth to life as to a quest 
To seek the highest, holiest and best." 

Eight' of the Class of '52 gave their lives for their country; 
thirty-eight responded when she called on them, for whether 
he wore the blue or the gray, each man fought for the salva- 
tion of his country as he saw it. Even one who had cared least 
for Harvard in his College days, wrote in his old age: "If I 
have added little to the lustre of 1852, I have done nothing to 
disgrace her," showing that to the last there abode with him 
the sense of allegiance to his Alma Mater and to his Class, 
and can a tie of such strength fail to be a man's safeguard? 

"Class feeling," said one of the Class of 1844, is "the mystic 
bond which unites classmate to classmate, ■ — a sentiment 
which none can appreciate but those who have felt it, who 
have been the members of a College Class; a sentiment which 
we all ought to cherish." l And cherished it was, indeed, by 
the men of '52. 

All knowing one another as they did then, shut in together 
within the narrow confines of the College Yard, when a trip to 
town was an event, intimacies were very close, the four-year 
friendship was very precious to those who had dreamed to- 
gether the rosy dreams and shared the long, long thoughts of 
youth beneath the College elms. 

My personal history . . . can be summed up in a few lines [wrote 
Joe Choate in 1872]. I have lived always in the steady faith in which 
we grew up together, that the Class of 1852 is the best thing that 
Harvard has yet produced. There have doubtless been larger classes, 
and perhaps vainer ones, but none whose appreciation of their own 
merits had so solid and deep a foundation. I am bringing up my 
four children in the same faith. 

1 The Class of 1844, prepared by Edward Wheelwright, in Sketch of Warren Tilton, 
p. 234. 

337 



Annals of the 

Some of the men never met after their Class Day, many 
fought on opposite sides in the Civil War, but the conflict 
over, all bitterness faded, and only the old bond of brother- 
hood remained, for "many waters cannot quench love, neither 
can the floods drown it." 

Stricken down in the first flush of his manhood, through 
years of life-long invalidism, one of the brightest spots in 
Kimball's life was the news from his Classmates, Gregory's 
last years of slow decline were cheered by the pleasant memo- 
ries of the Fortieth Anniversary, which he attended, and his 
chief interest centred in the bulletins of the Class sent him by 
the faithful Denny. 

When Thayer received from Harvard the Degree of LL.D. 
his chum said that "no honor he could receive himself would 
give him the pleasure of the degree conferred on Thayer by 
the College which they both loved," and he meant it, too, for 
to the end their feeling for one another was that of brothers, 
and the honor of one was the honor of all. In this sense did 
those of the Class who could not otherwise have attended the 
Fortieth Anniversary, accept of the fund which was raised for 
the purpose and offered by Denny with tender delicacy. "I 
catch myself calling the Roll as it used to be every now and 
then," wrote Hilliard. He had seen only two classmates in 
nineteen years, but his heart was with them still; and Joe 
Choate tells us in his Autobiography that many a night he 
put himself to sleep by repeating the same old Roll. Thorn- 
dike pinned Denny's greeting to his youngest grandchild on 
the family Christmas Tree, and to more than one of the chil- 
dren of the Class have the old College Melodies served as a 
lullaby. 

The waves of life were to drift them far asunder, through 
many a chance and change, yet who can doubt that some- 
where in the Harvard Valhalla the 

"old companions trusty 
Of early days" 

will meet together once more, perennially young? 

"But O blithe breeze, and O great Seas, 
Though ne'er, that earliest parting past, 
On your wide plain they join again, 
Together lead them home at last! 

338 



Harvard Class of 1852 

One port methought, alike they sought, 
One purpose hold, where'er they fare, 
O bounding breeze, O rushing seas, 
At last, at last, unite them there." 



CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF THE CLASS 





Born 






Born 




Huntington 


10 December, 


1822 


Downes 


24 November, 


1830 


Canfield 


13 April, 


1823 


Pratt 


24 December, 


1830 


Rodgers 


20 October, 


1824 


Thayer 


15 January, 


1831 


Hill 


3 March, 


1825 


Sprague 


18 January, 


1831 


Gray 


2 February, 


1827 


Buttrick 


23 January, 


1831 


Gregory 


20 April, 


1828 


Wallace 


29 January, 


1831 


Spencer 


21 September. 


1828 


Williamson 


31 January, 


1831 


Hoar 


22 November, 


1828 


Willard 


3 February, 


1831 


Gurney 


18 February, 


1829 


Head 


4 February, 


1831 


Page 


3 July, 


1829 


Waring 


7 February, 


1831 


Oliver 


26 October, 


1829 


D. E. Ware 


11 February, 


1831 


Thorndike 


28 December, 


1829 


Bradlee 


24 February, 


1831 


Richardson 


7 January, 


1830 


Stedman 


23 March, 


1831 


Whittemore 


15 February, 


1830 


F. W. Hurd 


5 April, 


1831 


A. Brown 


21 February, 


1830 


Brooks 


8 May, 


1831 


S. H. Hurd 


7 April, 


1830 


Haven 


20 May, 


1831 


Cary 


10 May, 


1830 


H.W.Brown 


25 June, 


1831 


Wheeler 


24 June, 


1830 


Este 


25 July, 


1831 


Porter 


28 June, 


1830 


F.P.Leverett 10 August, 


1831 


Collins 


19 July, 


1830 


Peabody 


23 August, 


1831 


Upham 


19 August, 


1830 


Vinal 


17 September, 


1831 


Washburn 


23 August, 


1830 


Curtis 


9 October, 


1831 


Cooke 


25 August, 


1830 


Arnold 


12 October, 


1831 


Dwight 


28 August, 


1830 


Blake 


20 October, 


1831 


W. G. Choate 30 August, 


1830 


Howe 


11 November, 


1831 


Dana 


6 September, 


1830 


Swift 


19 November, 


1831 


Wright 


20 September, 


1830 


Stickney 


25 November, 


1831 


Williams 


27 September, 


1830 


Cheever 


30 November, 


1831 


Gardiner 


5 October, 


1830 


Norris 


30 November, 


1831 


King 


12 October, 


1830 


Kimball 


4 January, 


1832 


Silsbee 


22 October, 


1830 


Alger 


13 January, 


1832 


W.C.Leverett29 October, 


1830 


Thaxter 


16 January, 


1832 



339 







Annals 


of the 








Born 






Born 




J. H. Choate 


24 January, 


1832 


McKim 


27 June, 


1832 


Coolidge 


11 February, 


1832 


Hilliard 


18 July, 


1832 


Phipps 


26 February, 


1832 


Crowley 


22 August, 


1832 


Fay 


17 March, 


1832 


Thomas 


7 September, 


1832 


Chase 


25 March, 


1832 


Revere 


10 September, 


1832 


Perry 


5 April, 


1832 


Greenwood 


12 September, 


1832 


Sears 


9 April, 


1832 


Neal 


23 October, 


1832 


Trimble 


18 April, 


1832 


Sohier 


19 November, 


1832 


Bonney 


28 April, 


1832 


Hooper 


3 March, 


1833 


Fisher 


7 May, 


1832 


Denny 


12 June, 


1833 


W. R. Ware 


27 May, 


1832 


Robert Ware 2 September, 


1833 


Quincy 


13 June, 


1832 


Anderson 


31 October, 


1833 



The average age at graduation was twenty-one years. 



340 



Harvard Class of 1852 



THE PROFESSIONS 



Horatio Alger 
Caleb Davis Bradlee 
Henry William Brown 
Charles Taylor Canfield 



CLERGYMEN 



Francis William Hilliard 
William Cole Leverett 
Charles Carroll Vinal 
John Singer Wallace 



LAWYERS 



Elbert Ellery Anderson 
Howard Payson Arnold 
Charles Thomas Bonney 
Addison Brown 
Edward King Buttrick 
Joseph Hodges Choate 
William Gardner Choate 
Josiah Collins 
Horace Hopkins Coolidge 
John Colman Crowley 
Charles Francis Dana 
Henry Gardner Denny 
Henry Hill Downes 
George Huntington Fisher 
Levi Gray 

Augustus Goodwin Greenwood 
Francis Saltonstall Howe 
Francis William Hurd 
Jerome Bonaparte Kimball 



Benjamin Flint King 
Edward Horatio Neal 
George Walter Norris 
George Augustus Peabody 
Josiah Porter 
Edward Ellerton Pratt 
Samuel Miller Quincy 
Edwin Aldrich Rodgers 
Nathaniel Devereux Silsbee 
George Brimmer Sohier 
Adam Wallace Thaxter 
James Bradley Thayer 
Samuel Lothrop Thorndike 
Charles Wentworth Upham 
Darwin Erastus Ware 
William Henry Waring 
Sidney Willard 
Russell Mortimer Williams 
William Cross Williamson 



PHYSICIANS 



John Ellis Blake 
David Williams Cheever 
Samuel Foster Haven 
George Edward Head 
James Seneca Hill 
Samuel Hutchins Hurd 
Frederic Percival Leverett 



Henry Kemble Oliver 

Horace Richardson 

Charles Ellery Stedman 

Robert Ware 

Horatio Hancock Fiske Whitte- 



more 



341 



Annals of the 



MEMBERS OF THE CLASS WHO CHANGED 
THEIR NAMES 



John Aloysius Colman Crowley to 

John Dwight to 

John Emory Horr to 

Joseph Augustus Peabody to 

Edwin Aldrich Rogers to 

Winthrop Sears to 

Erastus Darwin Ware to 



John Colman Crowley 
Jonathan Dwight 
John Emory Hoar 
George Augustus Peabody 
Edwin Aldrich Rodgers 
Knyvet Winthrop Sears 
Darwin Erastus Ware 



HARVARD SONS OF HARVARD FATHERS 



son 


of 


son 


of 


son 


of 


son 


of 


sons 


of 


son 


of 


son 


of 


son 


of 



Horatio Alger 
Peter Chardon Brooks 
Edward King Buttrick 
David Williams Cheever 

Joseph Hodges Choate 
William Gardner Choate 
Thomas James Curtis 

Edwin Hedge Fay 
John Sylvester Gardiner 



Augustus Goodwin Greenwood son of 

Samuel Foster Haven son of 

George Edward Head son of 

Francis William Hilliard son of 

Francis Saltonstall Howe son of 

Benjamin Flint King son of 

Frederic Percival Leverett son of 

Henry Kemble Oliver son of 

George Augustus Peabody son of 

John Taylor Perry son of 

Samuel Miller Quincy son of 

Knyvet Winthrop Sears son of 

342 



Horatio Alger, 1825 
Gorham Brooks, 1 8 14 
Ephraim Buttrick, 1819 
Charles Augustus Cheever, 
1813 

George Choate, 181 8 

Charles Pelham Curtis, 
1811 

Edwin Fay, 1817 

William Howard Gardi- 
ner, 1816 

Francis William Pitt 
Greenwood, 18 14 

Samuel Foster Haven, 
1826 

George Edward Head, 18 12 

Francis Hilliard, 1823 

Isaac Reddington Howe, 
1810 

Daniel Putnam King, 1823 

Frederic Percival Lever- 
ett, 1821 

Henry Kemble Oliver, 
1818 

George Peabody, 1823 

William Perry, 181 1 

Josiah Quincy, 1 821 

David Sears, 1807 



Harvard Class of 1852 



Nathaniel Devereux Silsbee 
George Brimmer Sohier 

Joseph White Sprague 
Charles Ellery Stedman 

Gorham Thomas 

Charles Wentworth Upham 

Robert Ware 
William Robert Ware 
Sidney Willard 



son of 


Nathaniel Silsbee, 1824 


son of 


William Davies Sohier, 




1805 


son of 


Joseph E Sprague, 1804 


son of 


Charles Harrison Sted- 




man, M.D. 1828 


son of 


Alexander Thomas, 1822 


son of 


Charles Wentworth Up- 




ham, 1821 


son of 


John Ware, 1813 


son of 


Henry Ware, 1812 


son of 


Joseph Willard, 1816 



HARVARD FATHERS OF HARVARD SONS 



Peter Chardon Brooks 
Addison Brown 



father of Lawrence Brooks, 1891 
father of Ralph Gascoigne Brown, 
1918 
David Cheever, 1897; M.D. 
1901 
fRuluff Sterling Choate, 

father of ~s 

I Joseph Hodges Choate, 

I 1897; LL.B. 1902 

William Williamson Cool- 

idge, 1879; J-B. Boston 

University, 1903 
Jonathan Dwight, 1880; 

M.D. Columbia, 1893 
George Chichester Fisher, 

1881 
David Blakely Hoar, 1876 
William Leverett, 1885 
Calvin Gates Page, 1890; 

M.D. 1894 
Joseph Trumbull Stickney, 

1895; Class. D.-es-Let- 

tres, University of Paris, 

1903 
Henry Austin Stickney, 

1900; LL.B. Columbia, 

1903 

1 Ruluff Sterling Choate died before graduation, April fifth, 1884. 

343 



David Williams Cheever father of 

Joseph Hodges Choate 

Horace Hopkins Coolidge father of 

Jonathan Dwight father of 

George Huntington Fisher father of 



John Emory Hoar 
William Cole Leverett 
Calvin Gates Page 



Austin Stickney 



father of 
father of 
father of 



father of 



Annals of the 



James Bradley Thayer 



father of 



Samuel Lothrop Thorndike father of 
Darwin Erastus Ware father of 

William Henry Waring father of 



William Sydney Thayer, 
1885; M.D. 1889; LL.D. 
Washington (Md.), 1907 
Ezra Ripley Thayer, 1888; 
LL.B. and A.M. 1891; 
. LL.D. Brown, 191 2 
Albert Thorndike, 1881 
Richard Darwin Ware, 

1890; LL.B. 1893 
William Bernard Waring, 
Temporary member of 
1882 from September, 
1878 to February, 1879; 
LL.B. Columbia, 1887 



HARVARD SONS OF HARVARD FATHERS 

Temporary Members 



Coddington Billings Farnsworth son of 

Robert Rollins Fowle son of 

John Clark Howard son of 

Charles Henry Stickney son of 

Russell Sturgis son of 



Ralph Farnsworth, 1821; 
A.M. (Hon.) Dart- 
mouth, 1825; M.D. 
1826 

William Holmes Fowle, 
1826 

John Clark Howard, 
1825; M.D. 1828 

Jeremiah Chaplin Stick- 
ney, 1824 

Russell Sturgis, 1823 



HARVARD FATHERS OF HARVARD SONS 

Temporary Members 

"Russell Sturgis, 1878; M.D. 1881 
Richard Clipston Sturgis, 1881 
William Codman Sturgis, 1884; 
Ph.D. and A.M. Nat. Hist., 1890; 
Dean (S. Forestry) Colorado 
Coll. 1905- 
Edward Sturgis, 1890 
Sullivan Warren Sturgis, 1890 
^ James McCulloch Sturgis, 1896 

344 



Russell Sturgis father of 



Harvard Class of 1852 



MEMBERS OF THE CLASS WHO SERVED 
IN THE CIVIL WAR 

Union Army 

Elbert Ellery Anderson Josiah Porter 

Edward King Buttrick Samuel Miller Quincy 

Charles Taylor Canfield Paul Joseph Revere 

David Williams Cheever Charles Ellery Stedman 

Henry Hill Downes Elijah Swift 

William Miller Este John Singer Wallace 

Samuel Foster Haven Andrew Washburn 

George Edward Head William Fiske Wheeler 

William Sturgis Hooper Horatio Hancock Fiske Whitte- 
Samuel Hutchins Hurd more 

Benjamin Flint King Sidney Willard 

Calvin Gates Page Russell Mortimer Williams 

Confederate Army 
Josiah Collins William Duncan McKim 

Edwin Hedge Fay Almon Spencer 

Frederic Percival Leverett David Churchman Trimble 



MEMBERS OF THE CLASS WHO WERE 
KILLED IN THE CIVIL WAR 

Union Army Confederate Army 

Henry Hill Downes Frederic Percival Leverett 

Samuel Foster Haven William Duncan McKim 

Paul Joseph Revere 
Robert Ware 
Sidney Willard 

TEMPORARY MEMBERS OF THE CLASS WHO 
SERVED IN THE CIVIL WAR 

Union Army 1 Confederate Army 

Samuel Pearse Jennison Robert Robbins Fowle 

Charles Henry Stickney Guignard Scott 2 

Henry Stone 
Russell Sturgis 

1 George Washington Horr volunteered but was refused on account of physical 
disability. 

2 Scott was killed in action. 

345 






Annals of the 



COLLEGE SOCIETIES 

ALPHA DELTA PHI 

Motto: Manus Multce Corunam 

The Social Meetings were held in the rooms of the members, 
the literary exercises in the rooms of the Society. 

Presidents D. E. Ware, '52 

W. G. Choate, '52 

Vice-President Ormond Horace Dalton, '53 

Treasurer G. W. Norris, '52 

Secretaries W. R. Ware, '52 

T. J. Curtis, '52 

Members 

Choate, J. H. Norris, G. W. 

Choate, W. G. Thayer, J. B. 

Coolidge, H. H. Ware, D. E. 

Curtis, T. J. Ware, W. R. 

McKim, W. D. Waring, W. H. 
Williamson, W. C. 

From contemporary letters we learn that in 1853 the 
members of the Society had badges in the shape of pins. 

Edwin Smith Gregory, Almon Spencer and Russell Morti- 
mer Williams belonged to the Hudson College (Western Re- 
serve) Chapter of the Alpha Delta Phi and were of course 
received as brothers by the Harvard Chapter on their arrival 
at Cambridge. 

At the Twenty-fifth Anniversary and Annual Convention 
of the Fraternity, which was held in New York on the twenty- 
fourth and twenty-fifth of July, 1857, the Oration was deliv- 
ered by Donald G. Mitchell and the Poem by William C. 
Williamson, '52. Joseph H. Choate, '52, was Chairman on the 
occasion. The exercises were printed at the time. 

CHI PI FRATERNITY 

In the Spring of the Sophomore year, March, 1850, an effort 
was made by Page, Richardson, Coolidge, Dana, Upham, 
Williamson, Waring, Norris, J. H. Choate and D. E. Ware to 
establish a Chapter of the Chi Pi Fraternity, chapters of which 

346 



Harvard Class of 1852 

already existed at Bowdoin and at Union College. The sug- 
gestion arose apparently from the fact that Stone, one of the 
members of the Freshman Class of 1852, had been elected to 
membership at Bowdoin College, where he was then a student, 
in 1850, and also, perhaps, because the Harvard boys felt that 
their own election into the Sophomore Societies was unduly 
delayed. 

A petition was drawn up addressed to the Chapter of the 
Fraternity at Union College, requesting permission to form a 
Harvard Chapter. There was more or less correspondence on 
the subject, but events moved too slowly to satisfy Sophomore 
impatience, and before any official affirmative reply was re- 
ceived, their ardor was cooled by election and absorption into 
Harvard Societies, and the Chi Pi proposition died a natural 
death. 

HARVARD BOAT CLUB 

The Harvard Boat Club was founded in 1844, but so far as we 
can judge in the absence of early catalogues the only members 
of the Class of '52 who belonged to it were those who partici- 
pated in the Harvard- Yale Race which took place on the third 
of August, 1852, at Lake Winnipisaukee. These were Curtis 
(Stroke), Dwight and Willard. 

The story of the race has been pleasantly told by James 
Morris Whiton (Yale 1853), Bow Oar of the Yale crew, and 
from his sketch the following details have been collected. 1 

The race was supposed to be a frolic, and no idea was enter- 
tained of establishing a precedent. 

The Harvard boat was named Oneida; she was manned by 

Joseph Mansfield Brown, '53 (Coxswain) 
Thomas James Curtis, '52 (Stroke) 
Jonathan Dwight, '52 
Charles Henry Hurd, '53 
Sidney Willard, '52 
Charles Jackson Paine, '53 
William Henry Cunningham, '53 
Charles Frederick Livermore, '53 
Charles Appleton Miles, '53 (Bow) 

1 "The Story of the First Harvard-Yale Regatta by a Bow Oar," published in The 
Outlook of 1 June, 1901, and privately printed with photographic illustrations of Lake 
Winnipesaukee and the course of the Race. The Race was commemorated by a break- 
fast at the University Club, New York, on 10 December, 1903. 

347 



Annals of the 

John Willson Hutchins, '53, and Horace Oscar Whittemore, 
'53, were ready to act as substitutes. Their uniform consisted 
of white shirts, trimmed with blue. 

All met at Concord, New Hampshire, whither excursion 
trains conveyed crowds of spectators. There were six judges: 
Franklin Pierce, 1 Col. Nathaniel Bradley Baker (H. C. 1839) 
of Concord, afterward Governor of New Hampshire, Julius 
Catlin (Yale 1853) of Hartford, Connecticut, N. A. M. Dudley 
of New York, S. H. Quincy of Rumney, New Hampshire, and 
Abel Herbert Bellows (H. C. 1842) of Concord, New Hamp- 
shire. The general management of the day was given to 
Colonel Baker. 

Willard, who was a man of tremendous strength, broke his 
oar, but the race, notwithstanding, was won by Harvard. 

Many of the College boys stayed at the Pemigewasset House, 
Plymouth, and it occurred to them that it would be pleasant 
to give a "hop," and invite the rural beauties of the town to 
the festivity. With this end in view, they applied to the land- 
lord of the hostelry and received the following reply: 

"Ye can hev the hall, young men, if ye want a gander dance, 
but ye won't get no gal timber there, I tell ye." 

HARVARD LODGE 

OF THE 

INDEPENDENT ORDER OF ODD FELLOWS 

Motto: " Procul Este ProjanV 

A Freshman Society. 2 The meetings were held in the rooms 
of the different members. During the season of 1848-49, 
when in the hands of the Class of '52, the President was Fran- 
cis Winthrop Palfrey, '51, — a Sophomore who was accustomed 
to appear at the meetings in cap and gown. 
The Invitations to join the Society read: 

" Bring thy unholy body to No Hall 

as the midnight clock strikes the hour of eight and it 
shall be done unto you as you desire." 

The Secretary was William Robert Ware. 

1 Bowdoin College, 1824, afterward President of the United States 

2 See Sketch of H. K. Oliver, p. 127, ante. 

348 



Harvard Class of 1852 



Members 




Calvin Gates Page 


I.G.A.S.S. 


Charles Ellery Stedman 


S.I.A.S.S. 


William Robert Ware 


D.C.A.S.S. 


William Cross Williamson 


S.S.A.S.S. 


Robert Ware 


I.S.A.S.S. 


George Edward Head 


S.D.A.S.S. 


Horace Hopkins Coolidge 


R.V.A.S.S. 


William Fiske Wheeler 


C.SA.S.S. 


Horace Richardson 


J.OA.S.S. 


Samuel Lothrop Thorndike 


M.T.A.S.S 


Henry William Brown 


C.I.A.S.S. 


George Walter Norris 


A.S.S. 


Samuel Miller Quincy 


A.S.S. 


Thomas James Curtis 


A.S.S. 


Joseph White Sprague 


A.S.S. 


Henry Kemble Oliver 


A.S.S. 


Josiah Porter 


A.S.S. 


Guignard Scott 


A.S.S. 


Robert Rollins Fowle 


A.S.S. 


Augustus Goodwin Greenwood 


A.S.S. 



NOTICE 

The annual Literary meeting of the Harvard 
Lodge will be held at the room of S. L. Thorn- 
dike, M.T.A.S.S. j in the Appian Way, on the 
evening of July 10th, at eight o'clock 

W.R.W., D.C.A.S.S. 



[In the corner is the 
seal representing 
a skull and cross- 
bones with the motto 
of the Society] 



The above summons was to the closing meeting of the 
Freshman year, at which the following Oration, Poem and 
Ode were delivered. 

The Society was abolished by order of the Faculty in 1850. 



349 



Annals of the 

ORATION. 1 

By G. E. Head, Jr., S.D., A.S.S. 

Most Grand and Reverend Master, Most Ignoble Grand, and 
Brethren: 

Can an ass speak? Can a dumb animal utter articulate 
sounds? All the experience of the present day goes to prove 
the contrary; but in an old book written many thousand years 
ago, a story is told of an ass, who, as this book says, did actu- 
ally address his master in words to this effect: — "Am I not 
an ass upon whom thou hast ridden ever since I was thine?" 
A wise animal truly, who knew enough to speak and yet did 
not know whether he was an ass or not; although the fact of 
his speaking might well have caused him to doubt his identity. 

The universal opinion in regard to this story is, that a 
miracle took place by which this quadruped was enabled to 
speak, and inform his master that he could n't pass as some- 
body was stopping the way. And this view of the subject has 
been taken by all the prophets from Isaiah and Jeremiah to 
the Wonderful Girl now exhibiting in Boylston Street, admit- 
tance 634 cents, whose opinion has been procured at immense 
expense on behalf of this lodge; by all the great divines from 
Ecclesiastes to Father Miller 2 and Elder Lamson; by all the 
greatest men of the last 3000 years, from Joab and Judas 
Maccabeus to the Emperor Napoleon and Captain Sturgis 3 
of the revenue cutter Hamilton; and last, but not least, by 
citizens generally. And in this opinion they have perversely 
continued to the present day, in spite of all the arguments by 
which some philosopher has shown to their benighted under- 
standings that this book is a stupid collection of old women's 
tales, not founded on fact. 

It has been reserved for an A.S.S. to overthrow this mass of 
authorities, to drive away these darkening fogs, — it has been 

1 An Oration, Poem and Ode, delivered before the Members of the H. L. of I. O. of 
O. F. on the Tenth Day of July, 1849. "Procul Este Profani." Printed for the Mem- 
bers of the Society. 

2 Father Miller was William Miller, the founder of a Sect called by his name, who 
believed in the second coming of Christ, and adopted the name of the Adventists. 
They built a church on Howard Street, Boston, which was subsequently converted 
into a theatre. Elder Lamson was also a Millerite. 

3 A Salem worthy overheard by Oliver, '52, to say that he never drank liquor. 

350 







is: i 

: 



m 






s 



V 












si » 



"w8 




^ 






Harvard Class of 1852 

reserved for a member of this holy lodge to burst forth and 
astonish everybody with an explanation so deep that it cannot 
fail to satisfy the most transcendental, so plain that it must 
enlighten even the dullest. His labors and trials have been 
intense on the subject; he has read three entire verses of the 
22d chapter of Numbers, and has nearly annihilated a vile 
hand-organ man, and quite cut the throat of an atrocious 
monkey who interrupted his labors; he has been tried for his 
life for "maiming, mauling, pounding, scratching, and cutting 
the throat of said monkey till he died," as the indictment now 
in the right hand pocket of the Chief Justice of the Supreme 
Court states, and has been brought in guilty of only man- 
slaughter by a humane anti-capital punishment jury; but he 
has labored on, and now lays at your feet the fruit which he 
has gathered. 

It is evident that the speaker in the above story must have 
been a man, from the very fact of his speaking; and it is evident 
from what he says that he must have belonged to the Har- 
vard Lodge of Independent Order of Odd Fellows. The tran- 
scribers must have left out the dots between his title of A.S.S., 
and the mistake must have arisen from that. So clear is the 
proof, that we are enabled to ascertain with perfect accuracy 
the very position which he occupied in the lodge: he was the 
Sublunary Doomster. For do not the words "Upon whom 
thou hast ridden," or, translating the Hebrew literally, "Who 
hast ridden thee," or "caused thee to ride," evidently refer 
to the Infernal Machine? 

The last and greatest reason of my proof is, that those who 
hold the opposite opinion are actually guilty of having brains. 
O, generation of vipers! For, who ever heard of an ass with 
brains? 

I suppose that the world, in its piggish obstinacy, will reject 
this clear and open explanation, and persevere in their old error. 
Let them do so. Let them abide the fearful consequences of 
their neglect. Until our lodge shall have accomplished its 
destiny, I see nought but tribulation for the children of men, 
nought but pestilence and desolation for the nations. I see 
the earth wrapped in the darkness of ages. I see but the 
light of our lodge burning dimly in the gloom; until that light 
increase, the darkness must remain; until our lodge encompass 
the whole earth, society can never be regenerated. 

3Si 



Annals of the 

It appears, then, that our lodge must have existed in the 
primeval times of the patriarchs, when old gentlemen of 500 or 
thereabouts used to indulge in bigamy to a shocking extent, 
marrying their wives' chamber-maids, and cutting up similar 
capers, which would have brought their careers to an untimely 
close if they had lived in these degenerate times. 

How long the lodge might have existed before this period, I 
am unable to state. That some dreadful circumstance must 
have caused its destruction before the fall of the Roman Em- 
pire, or the winter night of the dark ages, there can be no 
doubt, for neither of those events could have happened 
if it had been in existence. Dreadful indeed must have 
been the day which witnessed the spectacle of our lodge in 
ruins. And yet the world lived on unconscious of its loss, 
not even preserving a vestige of that which might have 
saved it. 

And now there was nothing to oppose the torrents of Igno- 
rance, Tyranny, and Bigotry, which swept Europe from end 
to end. And had not the spirit of our institution survived her 
name, the Reformation, and the steady improvement of man- 
kind for the last three centuries, would never have occurred. 
But the work was not yet accomplished. After the career of 
Napoleon had finished, men waited as if in expectation of 
another more important incident. A prophecy was current in 
France that the greatest event of modern times would take 
place in 1848. 1 While the nations of the earth stood in ex- 
pectation, while crowned heads were trembling in doubt and 
dismay, the mighty genius of a Mead 2 conferred that greatest 
blessing on the human race, by calling into new existence the 
Harvard Lodge, by renewing its pristine splendor, and by 
sending it forth a triumphant conqueror in the path of Liberty 
and Fun. 

Place him by the Father of our Country! Crown him with 
the laurel of victory, as the greatest of resurrectionists ! May 
his name be as lasting as the Medes of old, as widely extended 
as the mead we have so often drank! May his domestic life 
be crowned with bliss! May Heaven give him on this earth 
his meed of happiness, and may a whole legion of little Meads 

1 Revolutionary uprisings of 1848 and the coup d'etat. 

2 John Noyes Mead, a Temporary Member of the Class of 185 1, and a former 
member of this Society. 

352 



Harvard Class of 1852 

cluster round his knees, fondly calling him father! Let us 
sing with Hippocrates, — 

2ow<5 drj Bv£<t>v£, (lear drj Toviov, 
"Ap.p.ep drj HlvtLv, arpUe drj Tovybvy ; 
Act drj \ov8 Bvp,<j>vyyLv plvy, 
ALvko/j, (t>i^\€8r}j3avy dtvyS) j3lvy ! ! I 

No sooner was the lodge once more on its legs than it began 
its glorious work; the same year which witnessed its revival, 
saw the French king driven from his capital, and all Europe 
convulsed from end to end; it saw the renowned Sullivan falling 
beneath the blows of Hyer; x and it heard the groan of scorn 
which rung on the ears of the caitiff J * * *. 2 It heard the 
war-cry resounding through Old Harvard, calling her sons to 
battle; and it heard the thundering response of our lodge as 
they rushed to meet the armed minions of arbitrary power; 
it saw us turn the wavering scales of victory, and drive back 
the overwhelming odds of the enemy by our headlong charge. 

Envious cavillers have indeed asserted that only one mem- 
ber of our lodge was there, and that he was observed igno- 
miniously creeping out from the fray, nearly crushed by the 
weight of his fears and an enormous hat, and looking very 
much annoyed. To such I make no reply, but appeal to the 
pages of history for the truth of my account. 

This is the history of our lodge, so far as it is possible to 
ascertain it, up to the present time. Let us now turn to other 
matters. 

Brethren, the day has at last come which we have been 
accustomed annually to celebrate through a long series of one 
year. You have conferred on me the honorable task of com- 
posing your oration; a task indeed! for it takes a prodigious 
genius to write anything funny, and a still greater one to see 
it after it is written; besides the writer of the first anniversary 
oration has nothing to say, and leaves still less to those who 
come after. 

Alas, my brethren, I pity you; for you have consigned the 
writing of your oration to an A.S.S. who brays too loud to per- 
mit you to go to sleep, too long and wearily to permit you to 

1 Two well-known Prize-fighters who fought somewhere near Boston, using only 
their bare fists as was then the custom. Sullivan, who bore the sobriquet of Yankee 
Sullivan, was defeated by Hyer who was half a head taller. 

2 J°py> tne sobriquet of Josiah Shattuck Hartwell (H. C. 1844). 

353 



Annals of the 

do anything else. His only consolation is that you are A.S.S.ES 
yourselves. 

Tonight is our night of revelry; but the ensigns of woe are 
upon our arms; we mourn two brothers torn from our fraternal 
embrace by the ruthless mandates of the Faculty, and ban- 
ished to the realms of rustication, where they can drink no 
more punch, smoke no more cigars, where sherry-cobblers are 
only met in dreams, and oysters are an ideality. Perhaps this 
very night they are turning their parched eyeballs to the 
south, thinking of us and of our orgies. May the Faculty who 
condemned them to their hard fate suffer all torments! May 
the monster B * * * 1 visit them in their dreams, and, like a 
foul vampire sitting upon their suffocating chests, insist upon 
their getting ninety-six pages of his Syntax before breakfast! 
May they be obliged to do interminable sums in Peirce's 
Algebra, article, common divisor! May they have no peace 
by day — no rest by night! 

But, not all; I would exclude our revered President from 
the curse. We honor him as a father, we love him as a friend. 
He it is who curbs the fiendish animosity of B., 1 the serpent- 
like venom of J * * *. 2 He it is who has shown that it takes 
Old Sparks to govern young sparks, that Sparks alone can 
quench the fires of a student's disposition. 

Doubtless you have seen trudging about the buildings, a 
low swarthy man, with large shoes, no dickey, and the hat. 

He is the talented but eccentric S ; 3 who deserves the 

sobriquet of the "Student's Friend." What must have been 
the presence of mind which prompted him to say when nearly 
crushed by an enraged policeman, "Stand back, insolent 
fellow!" 

Why was not the justice informed of his celebrated opinion? 
"Some men when they get sticks into their hands feel very 
big." Could any one have been convicted in the face of that? 

Ah! S ! S ! 3 If you had only belonged to our 

lodge and rushed in with those shoes, what a clattering there 
would have been among the shin-bones! May you have all 
the wishes of your heart gratified; may you always live where 
shoe-leather and broad-brimmed hats are abundant, and lamp- 

1 Charles Beck. 

2 Jopy, Josiah Shattuck Hartwell. 

3 Evangelinus Apostolides Sophocles. 

354 



Harvard Class of 1852 

light scarce; and may no ghost or bogie pester you or bite your 
boots! But let me not pass over in silence him who nobly 
dared to face the collected hatred of J * * *, x and the ferocity 

of B , 2 and P ; 3 the martyred Tom, 4 he who 

lifted up his voice, and, amidst the crowds of his admiring 

comrades, gave the cry "Three groans for !" who first 

publicly vindicated the claim of our class for being the spunki- 
est in college; and who conferred the greatest honor on our 
most sacred lodge. Never, I will answer for it, has an A.S.S. 
done a braver deed. Even the chains of death could hardly 
prevent our Cadaverous Spectre from giving three cheers, and 
drinking a rum punch, so much was he delighted. 

Our brother went into exile amid the tears and regrets of 
the whole college; sadly he turned his back on the old halls 
where he had enjoyed himself so well; but he will return in 
triumph; our lodge will remember him till the end of the world 
with respect and admiration, and on his tomb will be engraved 
that simple epitaph, more expressive than the longest oration, 

"Here lies Tom y e groaner." 

Our lodge is now as high in prosperity as it can possibly 
be, and it is daily climbing higher; its very name is a watch 
word of safety: he who belongs to it can suffer no harm. When 
hundreds and thousands of our fellow men are withering in 
the blast of the pestilential wind which has blown upon us 
from Asia, has a single member of the Harvard Lodge fallen? 
Has not the very State which contains this precious treasure 
been free from its ravages? And can this be referred to any- 
thing else than the existence of a band of social A.S.S.ES so 
near its capital? 

Some envious railers indeed say that it is the absence of 
lime which occasions the absence of cholera. O, childish sub- 
terfuge! They are only base slanderers who wish to detract 
from the glory of our sacred lodge. 

A calculation has been made by our most learned and wise 
Medical Tormentor, by which he shows that one purification 
by smoke is equal to five grains of morphine, by fire to ten 
grains, and one oration to three quarts of laudanum. There- 

1 "J°Py" 2 Charles Beck. 

3 Benjamin Peirce. 4 Thomas James Curtis. 

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fore methinks we are safe, and our traducers buried in cerulean 
and night-glimmering darkness. 

My brethren, I have trespassed on your patience too long, 
and I must come to an end. Our Freshman year is closing. 
Its sun is just setting in the west, even yet brilliant in its 
fading glories. It will never rise again; but in its place the 
sophomoric luminary is already reddening the dawn. The 
officers of the college stand trembling before its approaching 
rays. Pale with terror, they think of the dying year, and they 
whisper, "If this is the Freshman, what must be the Sopho- 
more class?" 

But one more orgie, brethren, and we shall be among the 
things that were. We shall never re-assemble in dread con- 
clave to celebrate the horrid rites of initiation. We shall never 
more hear the freezing chorus, or the voice choked with emo- 
tion, in which our insane parson administers the oath. But a 
new and splendid vision is opening before me. I see our class, 
now Sophomores, renewing scenes of inauguration every night; 
I see our whole lodge desperately striving to dead, 1 by doing 
that hardest of all work — nothing. I see them shaking their 
fists in the face of the parietal tutor, and cultivating the fiercest 
of moustaches. I see them drinking, fighting, spreeing, roaring, 
the admiration of servant girls, the everlasting foes of the 
Freshmen. In fine, I see them Sophomores. 

POEM 

By H. H. Coolidge, R.V., A.S.S. 

The moon was pouring down her pale clear ray, 
Rivalling in splendor the sun-god of day; 
In all her beauty moved the Queen of Night, 
While round her shone the stars with paler light; 
Each as if subject to her sacred will, 
And striving each some office to fulfil, ■ — 
To serve on her, their peerless queen of love, 
They seemed about her in a dance to move. 
But she, as though she would deserve their praise, 
Gladdened the earth still more with brilliant rays; 

1 "Dead, to be unable to recite; to be ignorant of the lesson; to declare one's self 
unprepared to recite" (College Words and Customs, by B. H. Hall, who quotes as 
illustration of the use of the word from the above passage, p. 148.) 

356 



Harvard Class of 1852 

It was an hour when e'en the wise would muse, 

And, midst their thoughts their sophistry would lose; 

And I was sitting, lone, within my room, 

Watching the moonlight glancing midst the gloom 

Shed by the trees upon their mother earth, 

Unkind to her, the author of their birth, — 

When all at once my room is filled with light, 

And, looking up, I saw a wondrous sight; 

Within the moonlight stood a form so fair, 

So noble, and majestic, in its air, 

I knew of mortal birth it could not be, 

For none so beauteous on this earth we see. 

He stood beside me, and I felt his power; 

And even as the weakest, frailest flower, 

Bends 'neath the blast by savage Eurus blown, 

In awe, and trembling, at his feet sank down. 

Then, stretching forth his hand, he sweetly said: — 

"Fear not, my son, I am no power to dread, 

I came to beg a favor at thy hands, — 

And hence to bear thee to mine own fair lands; 

Come, wilt thou go with me upon the blast? 

For know, I am the Genius of the Past! 

I o'er fair Harvard hold unbounded sway, 

And, in her name, I charge thee to obey 

My mandates. Come, I wait no longer here, 

Let's now away, there is no cause for fear." 

Charmed by the silvery sweetness of his voice, 
I ceased to fear, and bade my heart rejoice. 
Then, rising up, I placed me at his side, 
And in a low, but steady voice, replied: — 
" I fear no longer, since I know thee now, 
And to thy will most cheerfully I bow." 
He smiled, and now I felt his warm embrace 
As he bent o'er me with his beauteous face. 
We rose from earth, and soaring through the air 
I clung the closer to his garments fair. 
Onward we go over our moonlit way, 
And round our path the gentle zephyrs play; 
Onward, still onward, midst the stars so bright, 
Pouring around us their effulgent light. 

At length we came to a dense mass of cloud, 
And, pausing here, the Genius cried aloud: — 

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"Roll back, ye clouds! It is thy lord's commands, 
Waiting to enter, at the gates he stands." 
The clouds roll back, and to our view disclose 
Gates of bright gold, which quickly now unclose; 
Up the dim vista gleamed the path of gold, 
Rich in its splendor, wondrous to behold. 
On either hand of this broad, splendid street, 
Lofty and beauteous halls the vision meet; 
Far as the eye can see the way they line, 
Each with its motto or appropriate sign. 

Up this bright pathway went my noble guide, 
And I pressed closely to his sacred side. 
Onward we went by many of these halls, 
Blazing with 'scutcheons on their lofty walls. 
At length we stopped, and stood before a door 
On which there glistened symbols of deep lore; 
And, looking up, I saw one simple word 
Dear to all hearts, by many e'en adored; 
That word was HARVARD, and above was placed 
The ancient seal, so beautiful and chaste, — 
Made of rich stones of wondrous size and hue, — 
Such brilliant gems ne'er shone to mortal view; 
They blazed like fire, and blazing, shed around 
Beams that lit up the glittering golden ground. 

I paused a moment at the golden door, 
My eyes were fastened on the brilliant floor, 
But the reflection was so dazzling bright, 
It seemed to sear and blast my eyeballs' sight; 
The door flew back into the jewelled wall 
And lo! I saw upon a purple pall 
In silver letters, an inscription gleam, 
Bright as the wavelet 'neath the moon's pale beam; 
"Within this hall dim visions do appear, 
Visions to every son of Harvard dear; 
For here are seen the deeds of ancient date 
Wrought out and fashioned by the hand of fate. 
Whate'er has happened at the Muses' seat, 
Within this hall is chronicled complete. 
Enter, O mortal! and perchance 'twill be 
A lesson to thee what thou here dost see; 
For 't is the appointed lot of man, to learn 
To judge the Future from the Past's dark urn." 
We entered, and around the hall I saw 

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Harvard Class of 1852 

Visions that filled my very soul with awe; 
There, midst the darkness of this spacious room, 
Shone forth these visions, lighting up the gloom, 
They seemed all brighter from the darkness round, . 
And I gazed on them in mute wonder bound. 

I saw the tyrant Eaton, 1 on whose face 
Every bad passion found a fitting place; 
His was a stony heart, unmoved by tears; 
He hates the students, and his hate appears 
In each and every action of his life, — 
For every action with revenge is rife. 
His soul delights in low ignoble deeds, 
Whate'er is cruel, his deep malice feeds. 
I saw him standing in his height of power, 
That was his proudest, his triumphant hour. 
But the scene changes — he's o'ercome by woe, 
For from his Paradise he's forced to go; 
Discharged from office, laden with a fine, 
No more round students' backs the birch he'll twine. 

Another vision met my watchful eye, 
I gazed upon it, not without a sigh; 
Before me, then, I saw the noble form 
Of pious Dunster, 2 battling with the storm 
Of persecution, raised by men who sought 
To bind and fetter liberty of thought. 
Alas! he fell — the oppressors conquered then; 
He fell, to live fore'er in minds of men. 

I gazed again, and lo! before me rose 
The form of Chauncy, 3 yielding to his foes; 
He had not strength to engage in fearless fight, 
Contending for the thoughts he knew were right; 
Perhaps he'd this excuse — that he was poor — 
And money was to him temptation sore; 
Therefore, he yielded, and received his pay — 
He kept his office to his dying day. 

Once more I looked; and now, before me stood, 
Great Increase Mather, 4 stern was he in mood, 

1 Nathaniel Eaton, "Schoolmaster," 1637-1639, fined and dismissed. 

2 Henry Dunster, President, 1640-1654. 

3 Charles Chauncy, President, 1654-1671. 

4 Increase Mather, President, 1692-1701. 

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Annals of the 

The Statesman-Scholar, who for glory strove — 

He, midst the wisest of the land did move; 

Of those who held the highest power of state 

He was the leader, not the common mate; 

His was the hand that highest power did give, 

Ah! little thought he then that he should live 

To see himself from his high place expelled — 

Longing to gain what he then lightly held. 

Such is the fate of man — and he but shows 

How the great men raise 'gainst themselves great foes. 

The faithful Leverett x rose before my view, 
He takes his place among the noble few 
Who care for duty more than fickle fame; 
An easy conscience is their highest aim. 

Another picture rises into sight, 
Surpassing all in brilliancy of light. 
'T is night — the storm-king rages through the trees — 
They creak and clash together at his breeze, 
Groaning and sighing with a noise most dread; 
While dense black clouds obscure the sky o'erhead, 
Draping the moon in solemn suit of black, 
As she, all sad, sails on her wonted track. 
The tempest roars, the hail comes plashing down, 
No foot is stirring in the sleeping town, 
When, suddenly, a blaze illumes the sky — 
It glares and flashes as it mounts on high, 
And as its light illumes the darkness round, 
It seems to show its density profound. 

" 'T is Harvard Hall on fire ! " 2 The alarm spreads wide 
Above the tempest; which, as though defied, 
Raged still more fiercely, and with greater force, 
Roaring and howling in its headlong course. 
Quickly the church-bell rang its loud alarm, 
And young and old came hurrying through the storm; 
Men of all stations, of all ages meet, 
To save from ruin Learning's favorite seat; 
They worked like heroes, but they worked in vain, 
For Harvard Hall sank level with the plain. 
Then a strange gloom the Colony o'erspread, 
They felt as though their fondest hopes lay dead; 

1 John Leverett, President, 1707-1724. 

2 24 January, 1764. 

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Harvard Class of 1852 

That Learning crushed, might ever prostrate lie, 

And ne'er again raise her proud head on high; 

But they with zeal rarely if e'er outshone, 

Resolved to struggle as before they'd done, 

With every danger that their path beset, 

With every trial their hard fate had met. 

The men of genius, leaders of their race, 

With noble ardor took the foremost place, 

And by their conduct influenced those who strove 

To work still harder in this work of love. 

Each man contributed whate'er he could; 

His sole reward, the thought of doing good. 

The rich man gave his pounds, the poor, his mite — 

For all men felt the loss sustained that night. 

Nor was there labor in this land alone; 

Others, across the seas, heard our low moan 

When Harvard fell, and by their active zeal 

Showed that for others' losses they could feel; 

With lavish hand their treasures forth they pour, 

And send them gladly to our own sad shore. 

At length a ray of gladness came to all, 

When from its ashes rose the ancient hall — 

Then joy once more resumed her pleasant sway, 

And 'neath her glance all sorrow fled away. 

The vision vanished into darkness whence it came, 

And now indeed comes one of greater fame, 

For in it moves the stately form of one 

Dear to all nations — valiant Washington! 

Before old Harvard's walls he takes command 

Of all the forces of our injured land. 

There, before Harvard, stood the sainted man, 

There his far-famed career he first began. 

Then came the clash of steel, and war's alarms, 

The rush of men, the cry "to arms! to arms!" 

Then Learning took from off her beauteous brow 

The branch of peace, and kneeling, laid it low, 

Before the feet of Freedom, on her throne 

Raised and supported by true men alone; 

Content in pausing from her proud career, 

To save from thraldom base her country dear, 

She left her ancient halls and wonted haunts 

To minister to zealous patriots' wants. 

At last, when Freedom gained, from war they cease, 

And welcome once again the reign of peace; 

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Annals of the 

Then she returns to her old haunts once more, 
To strive again in her pursuit of lore. 

Lo! other visions rise and disappear, 
Each showing something in the proud career 
Run by fair Harvard in the days of old — 
Sung of in ballads, and by firesides told; 
I scanned with eager eye the vast array 
Of deeds which happened in a former day; 
Until the last faded to empty air: 
In silent wonder I stood gazing there. 

And now, once more, I heard my noble friend 
In silvery accents bidding me attend; 
"Thou now hast seen," he said, "a noble mass 
Of visions of great deeds before thee pass, 
And as reward for this I only claim 
That you should cite some deeds of lesser fame 
Which your own class achieved in the past year, 
To add to this my vast collection here." 
Although astonished at his strange request, 
I knew I must comply with his behest; 
"Your kindness," I replied, "deserves reward 
Greater than we poor mortals can accord. 
Since you command, I surely will obey, 
Yet fain would I your kindness better pay; 
For midst the visions which I now have seen 
Our humble deeds would seem but small, I ween. 
No feats of learning, or of genius great, 
Or patriotism, can I now relate — 
But only deeds which in themselves are nought, 
And yet we Freshmen them most noble thought; 
True, they were bold for Freshmen to attempt, 
And in this light are far above contempt. 

"When the old year was drawing towards its close, 
And in its place the gladsome new one rose, 
Then members of each class with spirits free, 
Went forth to greet her round Rebellion Tree. 
Round that old tree, sacred to students' rights, 
And witness too of many wondrous sights. 
In solemn circle all the students passed; 
They danced with spirit, until tired at last, 
A pause they make, and some a song propose. 
Then 'Auld Lang Syne' from many voices rose. 

362 



Harvard Class of 1852 

Now as the lamp of the old year dies out, 
They greet the new one with exulting shout. 
They groan for Hartwell; and each class they cheer; 
And thus they usher in the fair new year. 

"Time passes on, the Freshmen bolder grow, 
As by their actions they most plainly show; 
For in old Massachusetts, time renowned, 
The proctors heard a most unwonted sound, 
(All honor to the class of fifty-two !) 
There in broad daylight stood they brave and true. 
Nine cheers for Sparks 1 they give with ready will, 
Those cheers re-echo in my memory still; 
They from the inmost heart with ardor came — 
They cheered the noble man, and not his name; 
'Three groans for Hartwell!' 2 next I hear them cry; 
Three heartfelt groans the Freshmen raise on high. 
Nor was this all; on Hollis steps they meet, 
And with three more the hated tutor greet. 

"Three days passed by, and now in solemn state 
The Faculty the luckless Freshmen wait; 
Sixteen in number are the noble band, 
As in suspense without the door they stand. 
They enter one by one and meet their doom, 
With brave, stout hearts, and faces free from gloom. 
Four are suspended, and among them one 
Who boasts himself of Harvard Lodge 3 a son — 
He was the one who for the groans did call, 
When they resounded in the ancient hall; 
We honor him as one who bravely fought 
For the free utterance of his own free thought. 
But one scene more I'll trouble thee to hear, 
For with this scene they end their short career; 
Before old Harvard Hall the scene occurred,. 
Which now perchance deserves a parting word. 
The students stand around the open doors, 
While through the entrance the procession pours, 
And now impatient strive to force their way; 
But the police are there in full array, 
They with officious zeal refuse the path, 
Which only serves to excite indignant wrath. 

1 Jared Sparks, President, 1849-1853. 

2 Shattuck Hartwell, Instructor, 1846-1850. 



3 Thomas James Curtis. 

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Annals of the 

Upon a student's head a blow descends, 
\nd after this all peace, all quiet ends; 
The well-known war cry then the students raise, 
That war cry heard on many former days, 
They rush upon them as the famished hound 
Springs on a stag and bears him to the ground; 
At last by Quincy's x means the affray was stopped, 
And Quiet o'er the scene her mantle dropped. 

"My tale is told, kind Genius, this is all 
That from our exploits I will now recall; 
If these seem humble when compared with those 
Which yon collection all so brilliant shows, 
Remember we were Freshmen, and as yet 
We hope our sun of glory has not set, 
Perchance hereafter we may place our name 
Through noble deeds within the halls of Fame." 
The Genius smiled, and raised me in his arms, 
And there I nestled free from all alarms. 
As through the air on his strong wings we fly, 
We leave above us the bright starry sky; 
He bore me back unto the place we left, 
When to his bright abode our way we cleft. 
I gazed from out my window on the scene, 
Bathed in the moonlight liquid and serene; 
The stars were pouring down their brilliant rays, 
As round their queen they moved with songs of praise; 
The trees upon the earth their shadows cast, 
Flickering as mid their leaves the breezes passed. 
I turned to find the Genius; he was gone, 
And I was standing in my room alone. 

Here ends my vision and my poem too, 
For your approval I most humbly sue; 
And though it wants the classic lore of Haynes, 
Smile on my efforts and reward my pains. 
Pass o'er my errors with a lenient eye, 
And strive my merits rather to descry; 
If in the whole some few you chance to find, 
Treasure them only with indulgent mind. 

1 Was this Samuel Miller Quincy? He was not a member of the Odd Fellows. 



364 



Harvard Class of 1852 

ODE 

By W. C. Williamson, S.S., A.S.S. 

" Gaudeamus igitur 
Dum sumus juvenes." 

Tune — Crambamhuli. 

Odd, but united Fellows! "we'll review" 
The varied phrases of the waning year; 
Sing first of all the Class of '52! 

Our Brethren next, tonight assembled here. 
The chorus swells from every lip, 
Hail, and bid adieu to it; 
Hail to Odd Fellowship! 
Odd Fellowship! 

Three times we greet our most Ignoble Grand, 

May his long shadow never be the less! 
The living Page, 1 we clasp him by the hand, 
"Examine all" — the rest you all can guess. 
If Richardson 2 — his martyred chum, 
Don't kill him by some horrid pun, 
He long shall live a Page of fun, 
A Page of fun! 

Within our walls one Sted(y)man 3 is seen, 

His chum, a sober Head, 4 accounts for that; 
Our lodge has Greenwood 5 too, though Fresh not green, 
Kat 7ap this Greenwood's destitute of sap. 

With Porter 6 and wild Fowle 7 we're blest, 
Hard Ware and stout Ware 8 with the rest, 
And Brown, 9 "in parvo multum est," 
Sed pullus est! 

No heart will tremble more at H 's 10 screw, 

With Beck X1 and Eschenburg 12 we let him rest, 

1 Calvin G. Page. 2 Horace Richardson. 

3 Charles Ellery Stedman. 4 George Edward Head. 

6 Augustus G. Greenwood. 6 Josiah Porter. 

7 Robert Rollins Fowle. 

8 Darwin E. Ware, Robert Ware, William Robert Ware. 

9 Henry William Brown. 10 Shattuck Hartwell, Instructor. 
11 Charles Beck, Latin Professor. 12 Johann Joachim Eschenburg. 

36S 



Annals of the 

Of S 's l we've had "suffeeshent" too, 

Amen to them, and let the dead(s) be blest! 
We leave the jocund Gray, 2 and while 
We lose his haze-inspiring smile, 
To Fresh we leave our clorophylle! 
Our clorophylle! 

We leave the glories of inauguration, 

Scenes none of us can ever all forget, 
The groans, cheers, dust, heat, thirst, illumination, 
One brother too, we honor him for it. 

Three hearty cheers! one glorious roar! 
More light see Alma Mater pour 
From Sparks 3 than ever it before, 
Than Everett 4 before! 

Ye Sophomores who honor us tonight, 

The august founders of this sacred band; 
Long ages hence when ours are wrapped in night, 
In Harvard's annals bright your names shall stand! 
And Freshman classes yet to come, 
Partakers of your wit and fun, 
Shall cheer the Class of '51! 
Of Fifty-one! 

The time has passed cum vino et cum joco; 

We've learned and followed too our Horace's lines, 
For "dulce est desipere in loco," 

To quaff "Falernian" and Sicilian wines. 

And moonlight rambles made by night 
Have proved that god's inspiring might 
Who puts corroding care to flight, 
Puts care to flight! 

Never regret the unreturning Past, 

The Future we'll encounter without fear, 
And hope that we, while college days shall last, 
May be a merry band of brothers here. 
Forever let us deem it right, 
To chase dull care and gloom from sight, 
Of darkness always to make light, 
To make all light! 

1 Evengelinus Apostolides Sophocles, Tutor in Greek. 

2 Asa Gray, Natural History Professor. 

3 Jared Sparks, President. 4 Edward Everett, President. 

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Harvard Class of 1852 

Classmates! the Freshmen day is flying past, 

Its sun is sinking in the western sky, 
Piercing all clouds, grown brighter towards the last, 
A glorious Sophomore day to prophesy. 

Farewell to J — 's r frowns and sneers, 

To Soph's "Romaic," and gentle Sears; 2 
The light of Sophomore dawn appears! 
The dawn appears! 



HARVARD NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY 

The rooms of the Natural History Society were on the 
ground floor of Massachusetts Hall, in what was very nearly 
the centre of the building. There was a collection of specimens 
(comprising birds only) in cases in the room. The meetings 
were held on Friday evenings, alternating with the meetings 
of the Hasty Pudding Club. Reports were read, lectures de- 
livered, and new specimens set up. 

Presidents Henry K. Oliver 

William G. Choate 

Vice-President Joseph H. Choate 

Recording-Secretaries William G. Choate 

William H. Waring 



Horatio Alger, Jr. 
Charles F. Bonney 
Henry W. Brown 
Edward K. Buttrick 
George L. Cary 
D. W. Cheever 
Josiah Collins, Jr. 
Horace H. Coolidge 
John C. Crowley 
Thomas J. Curtis 
Charles F. Dana 
George H. Fisher 
Francis W. Hilliard 



Members 

W. Sturgis Hooper 
J. E. Horr 
F. W. Hurd 
Samuel H. Hurd 
E. H. Neal 
George W. Norris 
Calvin G. Page 
Horace Richardson 
N. D. Silsbee 
Joseph W. Sprague 
Charles E. Stedman 
E. Swift, Jr. 
J. B. Thayer 



S. L. Thorndike 
David C. Trimble 
Charles W. Upham, Jr. 
D. E. Ware 
Robert Ware 
W. R. Ware 
William H. Waring 
Andrew Washburn 
William F. Wheeler 
H. H. F. Whittemore 
William C. Williamson 
Chauncey Wright 



1 J°Py> nickname for Shattuck Hartwell. 

2 Philip Howes Sears (H. C. 1844), Instructor, 1848-9. 



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Annals of the 

THE HASTY PUDDING CLUB 

Motto: Concordia Discors 

The meetings were held on alternate Friday nights, and 
were of a social nature. There was a library, and in 1849 the 
Club occupied the room at No. 29 Stoughton Hall, an addi- 
tional adjoining room being granted them a few years later. 

Presidents S. Lothrop Thorndike 

William Duncan McKim 
Vice-Presidents David C. Trimble 

Charles Ellery Stedman 
Secretaries and Poets Joseph H. Choate 

William C. Williamson 
Treasurer and Orator .... Darwin E. Ware 

Orator and KP James B. Thayer 

Chorister William G. Choate 

Librarians William H. Waring 

William R. Ware 
K7r Thomas J. Curtis 

Members 

John E. Blake George A. Peabody 

Peter C. Brooks Edward E. Pratt 

Horace H. Coolidge Samuel M. Quincy 

Charles F. Dana Paul Joseph Revere 

George H. Fisher Knyvet W. Sears 

Augustus G. Greenwood George B. Sohier 

George W. Norris Charles W. Upham, Jr. 

Calvin G. Page Robert Ware 

Honorary Member after Graduation 
Chauncey Wright 

The daintily written program of the revels of 17 October, 
185 1, tells us that 

Miss GEORGIANNA SOHIER 
The Black Swan of Senegambia 
respectfully announces her first grand Soiree Musicale Ethiopienne 
She will be assisted by 

Messrs. Blake, Tambourine Williamson, Violin 

Trimble, Banjo Sears, Banjo 

Thorndike, Banjo Brooks, Bones etc. 

ending with the announcement that 

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Harvard Class of 1852 

Miss Sohier will give lessons on the Triangle daily in the Mathe- 
matical Recitation Room. 

A dinner was given by the Club on 12 January, 1852, at 
the Winthrop House, whereat Thayer delivered an oration, 
Williamson a poem and Coolidge an ode. 

THE IADMA 

The Iadma was a debating Society, before which poems and 
orations were delivered. The name was derived from the 
words 

INVENTION 

ARRANGEMENT 

DELIVERY 

MEMORY 

ACTION 

the translation of Cicero's definition of the requisites of an 
orator: 1, Inventio; 2, Dispositio; 3, Elocutio; 4, Memoria; 
5, Actio. Thaxter, who was one of the chief founders of the 
Club, suggested it. There were fifty-two members and weekly 
meetings were held. As no Catalogues were printed, we know 
with certainty the names of only eight members, which are 
appended. It is supposed that the Society did not survive 
the graduation of the Class of '52. 
The notice of election reads — ■ 

Dear Sir: 

/ have the honor of informing you of 
your election to " The Iadma." 

You are requested to be present at the 
next meeting and sign the constitution. 

Edwin H. Neal 

Sec'y. 
Members 

Anderson, Elbert Ellery 

Jennison, Samuel Pearse 

Kimball, Jerome Bonaparte 

Neal, Edwin Horatio 

Thaxter, Adam Wallace 

Upham, Charles Wentworth, Jr. 

Ware, Robert 

Williamson, William Cross (President) 

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Annals of the 



POEM 



DELIVERED BEFORE 



THE IADMA 



HARVARD COLLEGE, 



THURSDAY, JUNE 27, 1850. 



A. WALLACE THAXTER. 



CAMBRIDGE: 
METCALF AND COMPANY, 

PKESTEES TO THE UNIVEESITY. 

1850. 



37o 



: 




/ 



*& 



. 




Harvard Class of 1852 

Cambridge, June 28, 1850. 1 

Dear Sir: — 

At a meeting of the Iadma, holden June 27th, it was voted to 
solicit for publication copies of the first annual oration and poem 
before that Society. 

We are most happy, as committee for the purpose, to fulfill the 
order of the Society by requesting of you a copy of the poem for 
the printer. 

With feelings of delight and gratification, we are, Sir, &c, &c. 

E. E. Anderson, 
E. H. Neal, 
S. P. Jennison. 
Mr. A. Wallace Thaxter 

Cambridge, July 2, 1850. 
Gentlemen: — 

I have the honor of acknowledging the receipt of your courteous 
note, asking a copy of a poem delivered before the Iadma, on the 
evening of June 27th, 1850, for publication. 

Conscious that it will not stand the test of a critical perusal, allow 
me, in complying with your request, to ask some indulgence for it 
as a "first attempt." 

I have the honor to remain, &c, &c. 

A. Wallace Thaxter. 

Messrs. E. E. Anderson, 1 

E. H. Neal, \ Committee. 

S. P. Jennison, J 

In reply to a similar communication made to Mr. J. B. 
Kimball, the committee received a note refusing to allow the 
publication of the Oration. 

1 Under date of 27 June Dr. White notes: "Heard an oration and poem delivered 
before The Iadma Society" (Sketches from My Life, p. 23). Dr. White was not a 
member of the Society. 



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Annals of the 

POEM 

I was breakfasting one morn, half asleep and half awake, 

Endeavoring to masticate a very tough beefsteak, 

And sipping what the waiter denominated tea, — 

What tasted more like dishwater than real old Bohea, — 

When suddenly the door was oped. Immediately appeared 

A Sophomore with fierce moustache and an incipient beard; 

A Regalia in his mouth, a dicky huge and tall, 

And a hat l whose rim terrific concealed his person small. 

He sat him down beside me and smiled a ghastly smile, 

Then, taking it from off his head, began to brush his "tile"; 

And knowingly he winked to me; — quite a peculiar wink; 

Not the jolly one inviting a friend to take a drink, 

But a sympathizing wink, a compassionate grimace, 

A queer, uncouth, Bob Logic like contortion of the face. 

A peal of laughter followed; with a loud, stentorian roar, 

Prostrate he fell for very glee, and rolled him on the floor. 

And when he had recovered, and once again was still, 

I asked him what had rendered him so gay, — so volatile. 

"Wherefore this joy ecstatic? Hast spent the livelong night 

In smoking Esculapios, — in getting jolly tight? 

Hast gone astray unwittingly? Hast fallen into error? 

Hast pummelled guardians of the night? Hast 'punished that 

Madeira'? 
Hast been with beauteous maiden by moonlight gleam a rambler? 
Hast ta'en a 'smile' at Brigham's, — a punch at the Alhambra? 
Hast 'liquored up' at Parker's, — at Davenport's hast 'bled'? 
Hast imbibed a sherry-cobbler at the famous Garrick Head? 
Hast made a call at Baker's with other jolly blades? 
To drink a Tom-and-Jerry hast visited the Shades? 
Didst relieve thyself at Morgan's of thy superfluous cash? 
Or didst thou at the Pemberton absorb a brandy-smash? 
Sub rosd art engaged to furnish arms and ammunition 
To ' Los Libertadores' for the Cuban expedition? 
Or yet, — though 't were incredible, — say, hast obtained a detur?" 
Making a reverence, quoth he, "0 salve nunc, poeta! 
Prepare to be astonished! 'Stand firmly in your shoes,' 
And repress your agitation when you hear the fatal news; 
Last evening the Iadma its orator elected, 

And, to fill the poet's onerous post, yourself, my friend, selected." 
I incontinently tried to faint, but 't was of no avail; 
My limbs still did their duty, though my spirit 'gan to quail. 

1 The Sophomore referred to was Coolidge, who at that time sported an enormous 
hat. 

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Harvard Class of 1852 

I sought some hope to borrow by thinking it a "sell," 

By fancying it a fiction, my anguish to dispel; 

But when I made inquiries, I found that he's asserted 

A simple, "round, unvarnished tale," and not one word perverted; 

That 't was no deceitful story with which I'd been surprised; 

In short, to use a classic phrase, that I was "victimized." 

I felt the honor, and I ceased my fortune to deplore, 

Yet still I thought the compliment a most decided bore. 

As THE IADMA willed it, I cheerfully obeyed; 

"The greatest poet for ideas more earnestly ne'er prayed." 

And now I've ta'en the office, and must woo the Muse poetic, 
Grant me a slight excuse, ■ — allow a word apologetic. 
To the title of a poet I've not the slightest claim, — 
Have perpetrated naught but trash most "impotent" and "lame"; 
And I've a dread of rhyming, — 't is very dangerous fun; 
By trying it some years ago, I was regularly "done." 
'T was when I first was deep in love; systematically smashed; 
"When, like comet, by my fancy's glass the imaged fair one flashed." 
When of Andrews' Latin Grammar I was a firm peruser, 
And after many nights of woe at last had mastered "musa." 

In my "Dealings with the " Living, a girl I chanced to meet, 

With the tastiest bonnet of the day, the neatest black visite, 
With the sweetest smile that ever a mortal could ensnare, 
With provoking, kiss-inspiring lips, and the darkest raven hair, 
And, as if she were determined all breastworks to assail, 
She had no pseudo-modesty and did n't wear a veil. 
(When a holiday procession by her window chanced to pass, 
She a student could distinguish without an opera-glass.) 
Instanter I was "smitten"; I resolved to press my suit, 
And, could I see her once again, to address her coute que coute. 
That evening in my chamber I wrote some amorous verses, 
Swearing I'd love her ever, through troubles, griefs, reverses, 
And if from odious spinsterhood she wished me to purloin her, 
When next she saw me on the street to bow, and I would join her. 
O, how I tugged and worked and strove those verses to compose, 
And how I cursed all poetry and wished I'd taken prose. 
And how full often in despair I threw away my pen, 
And, when I'd gained a new idea, — resumed it once again! 
When I had sent the verses, and waited for the morrow 
Which was to fill my heart with joy, or burden it with sorrow, 
How slowly seemed to wear the time! — each hour appeared a year, 
And the long-desired to-morrow I thought would ne'er be here. 
And when the fatal day arrived when I was to know my doom, 
Which was to crown my ardent hopes or crush them in their bloom 

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Annals of the 

I took a port wine sangaree just to keep my temper mild; 

But 't was so strong, that schoolmates asked what made me look so 

wild. 
When twelve arrived, the dreaded hour when I was to meet my fair, 
No artful "dodge" to leave my school could I just then prepare, 
Till my ever-ready genius did a "fancy" one propose, — 
A complaint that's very common now, — a bleeding at the nose. 
I saw her on the street, but with a sneering, pitying gaze, 
When I doffed my hat and bent me low before her beauty's blaze, 
She curled her lip that I might see how much I was derided, 
And responded to my bow by a cut the most decided. 
That night I was quite frantic; I thought of poisons, drugs, 
Of charcoal, arsenic, laudanum, and the stuff for killing bugs, 
But on second thoughts concluded to die a natural death, 
And "throw physic to the dogs," like that nice young man, Macbeth. 

And since that time to woo the Muse I have never been inclined; — 
"For this night only," since you wish, I'm induced to change my 

mind; — 
I must say 't is a "grind," though — (perchance I spoke too loud) — 
I should have recollected here no grinding is allowed. 
Yet to try my hand at scribbling why should I be a coward? 
I may in time, perchance, become another "Waldo Howard." 
If I plagiarize unconsciously, pray do not criticize 
My unpretending doggerel with Aristarchian eyes, — 
Think a new poetic debutant unused to fiction's style, 
"As you know me all, a plain, blunt man," requests your favoring 

smile. 

I sing of Humbug, — not that which t' amuse some scores of dummies 
Imports a Swedish Nightingale or opes Egyptian Mummies, — 
Which hears "Mysterious Knockings," — which gloats o'er each 

new mystery, — 
But Humbug as connected with a Cambridge Student's history. 

The Student's now in embryo, counting the weary hours 
Before the next Commencement; praying his guardian powers 
To assist a poor "Sub Fresh" at the dread Examination, 
And free from all "conditions" to insure his first vacation. 
For many weeks he "crams" him, — daily does he rehearse 
"Incomprehensibilities" writ by Professor P*****. 1 
He cons the College Bible with eager, longing eyes, 
And wonders how poor students at six o'clock can rise. 

1 Benjamin Peirce, Professor of Mathematics. 

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Harvard Class of 1852 

He reads concerning punishments with great deliberation, 
And thinks that he would rather die than suffer "rustication." 

The awful day at last has come; he dresses in his best, 
And with eager, anxious, bloodshot eyes, — (for not an hour of rest 
The night before has blest his couch,) — at four o'clock he rises, 
And on the "Latin Scanning Rules" his memory exercises 
For half an hour "by Shrewsbury clock": then, mounting on his 

beast, 
Betakes him to a hair-dresser, — I beg pardon, — an artiste. 
And when the curling 's finished, he leaves his native glades, 
And wends his weary pilgrimage towards Harvard's classic shades; 
Inquires for "University," and, when he's safely in it, 
Considers carefully his age up to the very minute, 
And when 't is safely registered, to breakfast swiftly hastes, 
And, gloating o'er the smoking cup, the Mocha (?) coffee tastes. 
Perchance in haste he burns his mouth, greases his Sunday vest, 
Or else he nearly chokes himself in trying to digest 
A chicken, dead of age alone, — that is to say, a hen; 
But he thinks there's "better luck next time"; he'll even "try again." 
He wonders at the custom, to which he's yet unused, 
Of leaving without asking if one may be "excused"; 
When his fellow-boarders twig him, and can't conceal their laughter, 
Considers if those wicked youths e'er think of an hereafter; 
And if a wicked Sophomore at the waiting-maid e'er winks, 
Of warning her of masculines most seriously thinks. 
And when the first day 's over, he considers how to spend 
The coming stupid evening; which way his steps to bend 
Long time his thoughts engrosses; but in misery and gloom, 
He's compelled to pass that evening in his solitary room. 
And then that home-sick feeling which ne'er can be expressed! — 
In which, as in Pandora's box, all evils are compressed! — 
Our "Sub Fresh" has that feeling; — in grief and in despair 
He reads the Pilgrim's Progress; then whistles Rob Adair; 
Then on a well-known instrument, formed of paper and a comb, 
Expresses his conviction that there is "no place like home." 
At last to bed he hies him, and soon his senses loses, 
And till the bell awakes him he most profoundly snoozes. 

The second day is over, — he's admitted on probation; 
It behooves him to indulge in a little dissipation. 
So carefully he locks his door, that no one may invade, 
And then, like Toots, he drinks a glass of the strongest — lemonade; 
And, growing bold with courage, assumes a dashing, jaunty air, — 
Has an idea of learning how to smoke and how to swear. 

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Annals of the 

And, filled with self-importance, he boldly seeks the road 

That reconducts his footsteps to his fondly loved abode. 

He spends his long vacation there; he strives himself to render 

The idol of the village belles; he is a warm defender 

Of his own loved Alma Mater. If he sees his former friends, 

His new-born Freshman dignity not a tittle e'er descends, 

But he instantly begins to cut whomever now he meets, — 

Himself the most egregious ass that walks the village streets. 

And when vacation 's over, and he returns to College, 

His father sagely counsels him to acquire naught but knowledge; — 

Smoking, swearing, drinking, must be eschewed for ever, 

And to "study hard and take a part" he must earnestly endeavour. 

He prepares for his departure, — but he must, ere he repair 

To the "classic shades," et csetera, — visit his "ladye fayre." 

He makes his farewell call, and in her gentle ear 

He swears that in his "heart of hearts" she ne'er shall have compeer. 

Taking his farewell kiss, swearing that he'll be true, 

Vowing fidelity for aye, he bids his love adieu. 

She waves her 'kerchief to him as he gallops down the street, 

And sings a woful ditty about dying at his feet. 

But the poor, hapless maiden would of reason be bereft, 

If, thinking it "all right," she found it "over the left"; 

Could she but view her lover's heart and read the falsehood there, 

Could his perfidy but be exposed, his treachery laid bare, 

'T would her pictured happiness destroy, her brightest dreams 

dispel, — 
Show her Humbug as love's essence, — ever a potent spell. 

Arrived at Harvard, straightway he adopts the bulletin's advice, 
And buys his books at the College Store, all "at the lowest price "(?); 
Since all his cash in buying them he has managed to exhaust, 
He sells his old clothes to Yica^a 1 for a tenth of the prime cost; 
Then devotes himself to study, with a steady, earnest zeal, 
And scorns an "Interlinear," or a "Pony's" meek appeal; 
Resolves that he will be, in spite of toil or of fatigue, 
That humbug of all humbugs, the staid, inveterate "dig"; 
And though to mar his enterprise no one will e'er attempt, 
Yet still there is a torture whence no Freshman is exempt. 
At midnight treacherous Sophomores, in conspiracy convening, — 
But hold! — perhaps a parody will best express my meaning. 

1 The orthography of this word being doubtful, I have preferred to use the Greek 
character. 



376 



Harvard Class of 1852 

Under sheets of clean linen lay the young Fresh; 

The hole in the window let in the night wind, 
Yet watch-worn and weary he lustily snored, 

And visions of college life danced o'er his mind. 

He dreamed of his home, of his pa and his ma, 

And the loaf of plum-cake they sent him that morn; 

Of the rooster, whose meals he was wont to prepare, 
And the little Scotch terrier, now sad and forlorn. 

Then Gammon her quizzical pinions spread wide, 
And bade the young Freshman in ecstasy rise; 

A mind's panorama oped, free of expense, 

And his governor's brick domicile blesses his eyes. 

The geranium-pots bloom in the window-seat still, 
And the cats make a noise on "the top of the roof," 

The little pigs squeal to hail the young heir, 

And the mare in the stall paws the ground with her hoof. 

A father surveys him through silver-bowed specs; 

A mother low courtesies, "in style," — a la Franqaise; 
He flies to the maiden his bosom holds dear, 

He kisses, embraces, and "je vous laisse penser." 

The heart of the Freshman beats high in his breast; 

He thinks the term's over, — vacation has come, — 
And, kicking the bed-clothes, exultingly cries, 

"Mint-juleps and Principes! is n't this 'rum'?" 

Ah! whence is that light which now dazzles his eye? 

Ah! what is that sound which now startles his ear? 
'T is the Sophomores rushing the Freshmen to haze! 

'T is the Sophomores' wild, demoniac cheer! 

He springs from his bedstead; he flies to the door; 

Amazement confronts him with Sophomores dire; 
Torpedoes are ruthlessly thrown on the floor, — 

His matches and candles are flung to the fire. 

Like maniacs let loose, his tormentors still yell; 

In vain the lost Fresh calls on Proctors for help; 
Unseen boots of Sophs attack in the rear, 

And their clamor is drowning the poor victim's yelp. 

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Annals of the 

O Freshman! O, woe to thy dream of delight! 

Like ice in the sun melts thy frostwork of bliss! 
Where now is the vision thy fancy touched bright 

Of thy sire "shelling out," — thy loved one's fond kiss? 

O victimized Freshman! never again 

Leave unbolted your door when to rest you retire, 

And, unhazed and unmartyred, you proudly may scorn 
Those foes to all Freshmen who 'gainst thee conspire. 

No Soph shall e'er plead to his classmates for thee, 
Or redeem thy poor frame from their merciless rage, 

But the smashing of glass shall thy serenade be, 
And the creaking of leather thy foemen presage. 

By the cool college pump shall thy corpus be laid, 
And on thy nude limbs the free water shall pour, 

Till, worn and exhausted, they carry thee back, 
And deposit thy carcass inside of thy door. 

Perchance on a sick-bed for weeks thou mayst lie, 

And thy doctor ex more thy torture prolong; 
Still thy anguish perhaps will a lesson convey, — 

Thou 'It have learnt how to "suffer," — if not to "be strong." 



'6' 



About this time to his father his first letter he indites, 
And somewhat in this style the verdant, serious Freshman writes : — 
"Dear Pa: I write, 'as in duty bound,' to say that I received 
Your letter of the twenty-first, and 'its import I perceived.' 
You wish that I should write to you a full and complete account 
Of my life thus far at Harvard; with pleasure will I recount 
All that as yet has happened; imprimis at the foot-ball sport, 
Where I anticipated pleasure, I was severely hurt; 
And when I did remonstrate, and asked them why 't was done, 
They said that my anxious mother should have warned me of such fun, 
And with a pitying, sneering laugh, and with a haughty stare, 
Remarked that boys must stay at home, nor taste the evening air. 
I've been assaulted in my room, — my matches have been wasted; 
For quoting Scripture to my foes, I've been severely basted. 
Drinking is very prevalent, and oaths are free and plenty; 
As for cigars, some Sophomores can daily smoke their twenty. 
Church-members are like 'angels' visits,' and tracts are seldom seen; 
And sober, moral men, like me, are reckoned rather 'green.' 
To heed your fostering counsels I'll earnestly endeavour. 
Permit me to subscribe myself, 

Your loving son, as ever." 
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Harvard Class of 1852 

Our hero's not long verdant; when his eyes are opened wide, 
He "makes up" for past "digging"; and then, ah! woe betide 
The pockets of his governor! The serious, steady youth, 
Last year a mere epitome of temperance and of truth, 
Becomes, by Humbug's influence, the veriest, saddest rake, 
That e'er tried to make night hideous, or watchman's head to break. 
The fall is never sudden, but 't is effected by degrees; 
As gradually as fall the leaves stirred by the autumn breeze. 
We'll view the initial step in sin, — "the first gleam of evil's star"; 
We'll observe our erring hero as he smokes his first cigar. 
With fearful agitation, with a pale, cadaverous face, 
He smokes, if not with awkwardness, most certainly not with 

grace. 
He wonders if it ever entered Sir Walter Raleigh's head, 
(Who first used the "filthy weed" 'gainst which the Author-King 

inveighed) 
That by his fell discovery full many a luckless wight 
Would feel the tortures of the damned; that every proselyte 
That bent before tobacco's shrine, that rejoiced to take a smoke, 
The "stomach demons" by that act did unwittingly provoke; 
That those horrible sensations, which we call ventri dolores, 
Would be propagated chiefly by Manuel Amores. 
And when his smoking 's over, and his toilette he's adjusting, 
His inner man begins to feel a pain that's quite disgusting. 
But why relate a twice-told tale? He's in trouble for an hour, 
And then, as drooping plants revive after a hearty shower, 
He feels relieved, and banishes all remembrance of his pain; 
Having passed the fatal ordeal, Fresh is "himself again." 

We'll inspect our Freshman hero when first himself he shaves; 
How at each deep cut the razor makes he furiously raves! 
He loudly curses Sheffield steel as mortals' worst affliction, 
And on "Macdaniel's best improved" he mutters malediction. 
He cuts and scrapes and pulls and hacks; his face the while still 

bleeding, — 
Each fearful gash the one before by half an inch exceeding. 
And when the awful job is o'er, he can't find the wished court- 
plaster; 
Fortunio's fairy-given slave, Lightfoot, ne'er ran faster 
Than runs our hero swiftly to the neighbouring druggist's store; 
2-40-like he rushes in, and commences to implore 
For the assuaging plaster, and his sufferings to recite, 
Boasting as "rueful" a "countenance" as famed La Mancha's 
knight, — 

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Annals of the 

While the "lookers on in Venice" survey the mirth-fraught scene, 
And quiz the verdant Freshman, and joke his saddened, downcast 

mien. 
The soft emollient purchased, he returns his room to seek, 
Nor once again he shaves him for full many a long, long week. 
Perhaps our hero feels inspired, and fain would woo the Muses, — 
And metre, rhyme, and reason he most horribly misuses. 
His theme at first, of course, is love; he inscribes some verses poor 
To some love-gift from his chosen fair, — some Freshman's gage 

cTamour. 
His sad experience well could tell what nonsense 't is to rhyme; 
'T is indeed a "waste of patience," but much more a "waste of time." 
Perchance he hails that "conscious moon," or salutes the evening 

star; 
Sings of some most daring lover, — some Italian Lochinvar. 
'T is usually written in a state of desperation; 
'T is very soft and flowery; — I'll try an imitation. 

"Wilt come with me, fair lady? 

Wilt share a soldier's lot? 
Wilt leave thy lordly palace 

For poor and lowly cot? 
No luxury can I proffer, 

Gold-bought from choicest mart, — 
One only gift I offer, — 

An undivided heart." 
The while amid the greenwood 

Whistled the summer breeze, 
Thus wooed fair Mantua's maiden 

The gallant Genoese. 

"Thy father proud may chide thee, 

And repulse his daughter fair, — 
But with thee, my love, beside me, 

His reproaches I can bear. 
Meet me at eventide, love; 

Come to my lowly cot, 
And swear, whate'er may chance thee, 

Thou 'It share a soldier's lot." 
The while amid the greenwood 

Whistled the summer breeze, 
He kissed fair Mantua's maiden, — 

That daring Genoese. 

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Harvard Class of 1852 

'I've no ducats nor no rent-roll 

Wherewith to claim thee, sweet; 
No vassals nor no handmaids 

Their lady fair will greet; 
But a heart that is no truant 

Is dedicate to thee, — 
That from its beauteous lady liege 

Sweareth it ne'er will flee." 
The while amid the greenwood 

Whistled the summer breeze, 
Thus vowed to Mantua's maiden 

That loyal Genoese. 

'Though Milan's maid may tempt me, 

Or Padua's dame invite, 
Their favors and caresses 

For thee, my love, I'd slight, — 
Would scorn the gemmed tiara, 

The diadem pass by; 
Thine eye their boasted beauty, 

Their lustre, can outvie." 
The while amid the greenwood 

Whistled the summer breeze, 
Thus sued to Mantua's maiden 

That earnest Genoese. 

'I fear no foe's stiletto, 

No coward's threat I heed; 
No danger can appall me, — 

No peril e'er impede. 
Swear on the holy cross, love, 

To share my poor career, 
Through weal or woe to prove thyself 

Still trusting and sincere." 
The while amid the greenwood 

Whistled the summer breeze, 
Besought fair Mantua's maiden 

That ardent Genoese. 

She kissed his dagger cross-hilt, 
Her holy vow she breathed, 

And trustingly upon his lips 
Her bridal kiss she wreathed; 

And to her lover's keeping, 

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Annals of the 

In sight of highest Heaven, 
With all a maiden's purity 

Her virgin heart was given. 
The while amid the greenwood 

Whistled the summer breeze, 
Fair Mantua's maiden swore to wed 

Her loving Genoese. 

That even to the trysting-tree 

The maiden gladly hied; 
The cavalier on swiftest steed 

Bore off his Mantuan bride. 
And as they passed her father's halls, 

Loud rose her lover's shout 
O'er all the furious wassail din: — 

"Call all thy vassals out! 
Arm thy retainers, dotard! 

Fling thy banner to the breeze! 
For Mantua's maid has fled her sire 

To wed her Genoese!" — 

He now affects the opera; says Snooksini is his pet; 
Wears immaculate white kids, and sports a double-sized lorgnette; 
Says at Snooksini's benefit her "troops of friends" must "rally"; 
Perchance he ardently admires the sweet, seductive ballet; 
Talks of tours de force and -pirouettes; he quotes from each new play; 
He catches an operatic air, and hums it all the day, 
While some Italian gallows-birds, some scoundrel lazaroni, 
Some friendless, houseless vagabonds add to their names an oni, 
Let their mass of hair make up for brains, daily "salute their glass," 
And, slightly skilled in "silver sounds," but endowed much more 

with brass, 
Humbug our Fresh, who little thinks, unsophisticated dupe, 
That who's a primo basso here, in Italy's a "supe," 
Or a claqueur, paid to applaud at every new concoction, — 
But here, the lion of the day, his tickets puts at auction; 
His fame is duly trumpeted to all Boston's eager ears; 
Even the Bite Tavern 1 wakens from its lethargy of years; — 
And the Italian charlatan, versed in naught save to deceive, 
And very "sharp" to catch a "flat," laughs exulting in his sleeve, — 
Henceforth to glorious Humbug his sole allegiance gives, 
And, protected by her sage advice, he like a — Barnum lives. 

1 The famous Bite Tavern stood in the south-east corner of Faneuil Hall Square, 
Boston. 

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Harvard Class of 1852 

'T were useless to note his progress through the Sophomoric year; 
As well search for Sir John Franklin, — trace Lola Montes' career, — 
Ask why religious jurymen themselves to praying yield, — 
Or S. P. Townsend l in despair has given up "the field"; 
It were an oft-repeated tale, and to our theme irrelevant. 
To shorten a long story, our hero "sees the elephant." 
To show how great, how fell, a change o'er the student's mind has 

passed 
Since we have seen his first epistle, shall we peruse his last? 
"Dear Governor: How 're you off for cash? How stands it with the 

stumpy? 
Why have n't I received the tin? Hast got the blues? Art dumpy? 
Please 'pony up,' — I'm rather short. Why art so long about it? 
I've pledged my word so oft, that creditors begin to doubt it. 
Art growing careful of the ready? Will the supplies e'er fail? 
'Because thou art grown virtuous,' are there 'no more cakes and ale'? 
Just think 'on all my glorious hopes and all my young renown,' 
And by the very next express the needful send to town, — 
For I've many scores of duns who 're anything but lenient. 
Your used up son. 

P. S. As soon as is convenient." 
And thus he enters college, and thus at last he takes his leave; 
Though rosy bright at morning, there are gathering clouds at eve. 
'T is HUMBUG guards his destiny, henceforth, as heretofore; 
We'll drop the mystic curtain, — and, like Cawdor, "see no more." 

'T is time that I should finish this crude and most imperfect strain, 
''''Cut off the water'''' [of Helicon], — descend to prose again. 
Let me speak a heartfelt wish ere this doggerel I conclude; — 
Believe me, 't is an honest one, though expressed in sentence rude. 
All hail to our Iadma! — its course be onward ever! 
Be it like Gonzalo's falchion, "contaminated never." 
Be it no brief ephemeral, decayed as soon as born, 
A "peerless flower" at midnight, and withered at the morn: — 
May a congenial spirit unite us when divided: — 
Be we faithful to our '"Union," though we're perchance "mis- 
guided"; 
Be the "even tenor of our way" like the unruffled stream, — 
Undisturbed by "rude commotion," — sweet as midsummer dream. 

1 S. P. Townsend, a Quack doctor, produced a specific to which another Dr. Town- 
send laid claim and brought suit on the ground that the remedy had already been 
produced by himself. The contestants were said to be father and son, and the case 
aroused much public interest; at the height of the excitement it was suddenly dropped 
and proved to be entirely an advertising scheme, the two Drs. Townsend being one 
and the same person. 

383 



Annals of the 

And like the exhausted sailor, — the veteran of the seas, — 
Who for many tedious years " has braved the battle and the breeze," — 
May we, like him, "laid up in port," sow the fruitful seed betimes, 
And, when "life's fitful fever's o'er," meet we in happier climes! — 
And since we've hailed the fraction, O, let one earnest wish ensue: — 
Prosperity to the integer, — the class of '52! 



INSTITUTE OF 1770 
Motto: Haec studia adolescentiam alunt 

The Institute of 1770 was a literary and debating Society. 
The meetings were held in a room on the ground floor of 
Massachusetts Hall, which was occupied in conjunction with 
other Societies. The library was kept in the sleeping room of 
the librarian, Henry K. Oliver, at No. 2 Holworthy Hall. 

From one of the tiny envelopes of the day, sealed with a 
wafer, we draw forth a notification of election to membership ; 
it reads : 

Dear Sir: 

/ have the honor of informing you 
of your election to the 

"Institute of 1770." 
You will become a member by attend- 
ing the next meeting and -paying to the 
treasurer the sum of two dollars. 

Henry W. Brown 

Sec'y., 

Presidents, 1849 Henry Williamson Haynes, '51 

Samuel Lothrop Thorndike, '52 
1850 Joseph Hodges Choate, '52 

Edward Holmes Ammidown, '53 
Vice-Presidents, 1849 George Bradford, '51 

Joseph Hodges Choate, '52 
1850 Calvin Gates Page, '52 

John Daves 

Librarian Henry Kemble Oliver 

Secretary Henry William Brown 

Treasurer Horace Hopkins Coolidge 

384 



Harvard Class of 1852 



Members 

Alger, Horatio Norris, George Walter 

Brooks, Peter Chardon Oliver, Henry Kemble 

Brown, Addison Page, Calvin Gates 

Brown, Henry William Richardson, Horace 

Cary, George Lovell Scott, Guignard 

Chase, Reginald Heber Silsbee, Nathaniel Devereux 

Choate, Joseph Hodges Sprague, Joseph White 

Choate, William Gardner Stedman, Charles Ellery 

Collins, Josiah Swift, Elijah 

Coolidge, Horace Hopkins Thayer, James Bradley 

Curtis, Thomas James Thorndike, Samuel Lothrop 

Dana, Charles Francis Trimble, David Churchman 
Greenwood, Augustus Goodwin Upham, Charles Wentworth 

Gurney, Ephraim Whitman Ware, Darwin Erastus 

Head, George Edward Ware, Robert 

Hilliard, Francis William Waring, William Henry 

Hooper, William Sturgis Wheeler, William Fiske 

Huntington, James Whittemore,HoratioHancockFiske 
Williamson, William Cross 

Lectures were delivered — one on the English Drama still 
survives — and poems; the opening stanzas of one of the latter 
are given on account of the allusions to contemporaneous 
events and professors. 

"Old Goody Muse, on thee I call, 
Pro more, as do poets all." 1 

"Oh for the golden age of Auld lang syne 

When students, and not proctors ruled in college, 

The spade and midnight oil I'd soon resign, 
And 'send the devil in pursuit of knowledge!" 

Thus sighs the modern Sophomore, when he hears 
The stirring tales of ancient Sophomore glory, 

The thrilling legends of forgotten years, 

Sent down to us in many a Goody's story; 2 

When, should the "laws" and students disagree, 
(For then the fire of seventy-six was glowing,) 

1 Rebelliad, Canto ist. 

2 Confer the account of a rebellion which is annually narrated by the Holworthy 
goody to the gaping Freshmen, when the tree was discovered one morning to be 
blossoming with the vessels of the Thunderer, blue, white and yellow. 

385 



Annals of the 

They met in council at "Rebellion Tree," — 

Its leaves were greener then, its limbs were growing — 

Speeches were made, and effigies were hung, 

Soaked were its roots in punch 'mid song and revels, 

While through the yard the students' war-shout rung, 
No Hartwell dared to say "Disperse ye rebels!" 

But have not we at this degenerate day 

Some glorious deed, some victory to recall, 
To point the jovial song or poet's lay, 

Of vanquished proctor, or grim tutor's fall! 

Have we? Ye Gods! — it natters me to say 

That to this question I may answer yea! 
We are the cause which drove our tutors three 

To shape their flying course across the sea. 1 

Just at the evening of our Freshman year 
When Fresh had groaned 2 and tutors quaked to hear, 
Upon a sofa, in a proctor's room, 
Three tutors sat, and wept upon their doom; 
'T was dead of night; the old clock's solemn chime 
With twelve sound blows had struck the passing time. 
Trembling with fear, and wasted to the bone, 
Hearing, with every breath, a Freshman groan, 
How gaunt and pale! How shook each palsied knee! 
They see a lurking Fresh in every tree. 
While thus in sad and sorry tone 
A gentle tutor 3 made his moan. 

"I cannot bear it; I am falling 
Into the 'sere and yellow leaf,' 
Voices of the 'dead' are calling, 
Calling on me for relief. 

1 A significant fact; — at the end of the Freshman year all of our tutors sailed for 
Europe. 

2 At a class-meeting in June, 1849, Hartwell, tutor, was groaned "thrice in Massa- 
chusetts, once on Hollis steps," which groaning resulted in the suspension of five 
members. 

3 The meek and lowly Sears was our first tutor in Mathematics. It was but seldom 
he attempted to remonstrate, and it was always to no purpose, for the students would 
"copv at the board" in spite of him. 

386 



Harvard Class of 1852 

"In my dreams I hear them groaning, 
Hear them jeer and curse my name, 
'Ponies,' too, and horrid nightmares 
Riding roughshod through my frame! 

"To myself I put the question, 

(Not without a muttered curse), 
Shall I brave the wicked Freshmen, 
'Cut' the Freshmen, or — cut Peirce? 

"To a foreign land I'll hasten — 
To a land across the sea, 
Where the god-forsaken Freshmen 
Ne'er again can trouble me." 

He ceased, and wiped his long, thin nose, 

And in the dark another speaker rose. 

In gentle accents, soft and mild, 

Spoke the curly-pated Child, 1 

But sudden stopped! — he heard a sound 

Of squeaking shoes that shook the ground. 

As in the calmness of a summer sky, 

While Twilight draws her star-wrought veil around, 
When all is changed and softened to the eye, 

And Nature slumbers in repose profound, — 
The sullen cloud comes up with muttering thunder 
Threat'ning to rend the firmament asunder; — 

'T was thus then on the meeting, the shiny-shoed Sophocles 2 broke in, 
Bursting with heart-taming spleen 3 and panting with death-dealing 

fury; 
Swarthy his face, and smooth, as the leaves of his often-thumbed 

grammars, 
Studied, and hated and cursed by none but incipient Freshmen. 
Curly his hair as the tail of a cur, and high in his right hand 
Grasped he his long-shadowing hat, and aloft in the other 
Waved he his blood-red bandanna; his neck was unconscious of 

dickey. 

1 Tutor in History and Elocution; a dapper man, in stature small; large and curly 
as to his head. 

2 Tutor in Greek. His brightly polished shoes and broad-brimmed hat, or in winter 
his blue cloak and cap, were continually to be seen perambulating the yard in all times 
and seasons. This, of course, is sarcasm! See pp. 325, 331, ante. 

3 See Homeric Lexicon. 

387 



Annals of the 

"I've ground them with my 'Alphabet,' 
I've choked them with 'Romaic,' 
I've scowled, and tried to screw 'em down, 
And all for Hartwell's sake. 

"Where is the gallant Shattuck gone? 
He, too, is struck with fear, 
He dares not venture out alone, 
Proctor Johnson guards his rear. 1 

"Think you I will shrink and cower, 
Have my soul torn out by jerks, 
Help maintain his sinking power? 
No ! I '11 go and fight the Turks ! " 

Thus in despair and fell dismay 

Our tutors all had fled away, 

And last and least for love and money 

Followed, too, the Horse-shoe "Johnny." 2 

It was n't very long ago, 

The time — I don't exactly know — 

I had a hideous, horrid dream, 

Such fancies in my caput teem 

And tumble round my dizzy head, 

I think I must have made a dead 3 

In Mathematics, for I swore 

"By Jupiter and Polydore," 

By dagger, bowie-knife, and sword 

To be no more by black-boards bored ! 

It might have been — I will not question — 

The "wretchedness of indigestion." 

I saw upon a blasted heath 

Mysterious with the gloom of death, 

A cauldron, boiling hot and fast, 

Its foul breath kissed me as I passed, 

It seethed and hissed, the blue flames burn, 

(I knew the cause, — I saw them turn 

Some "Curves and Functions" on the fire, 

Well might they rave and roar with ire!) 

1 So unpopular was Shattuck Hartwell at this time that he took up his quarters 
for several nights with a gigantic proctor, yclept Johnson. 

2 The Horse-shoe, a Poem by John Brooks Felton, H. C. 1847, Cambridge: 1849. 

3 See note on page 356. 

388 



Harvard Class of 1852 

Gods! — Here the "Faculty" were met, 

A raging, fighting, devilish set, 

I saw each face, I knew each name, 

They seemed — and yet seemed not — the same. 

Some still looked young, some had grown old, 

And some had tails, though that must not be told. 

And round about the pot they go, 

Now hurrying fast, now treading slow, 

Now leaping high, now crouching low, 

They fanned the embers to a living glow; 

And some one says — I won't say who — 

"Of students' brains we are making a stew!" 

In a short jacket "Potty" l came, 

I heard him ever and anon 

Sing "'Jopy,' 2 put that kettle on!" 

And " Corney," 3 too, was there avrdraTos, 

Majestic, like a huge rhinoceros, 

Except that he was very thin 

Because they'd managed to keep him in 

The "Regent's Office," where his cares, 
Fixing "excuses," and looking up "prayers," 
Getting out books and "Tabular views" 
(The last were never intended for use), 
Racking his brains and spoiling his eyes 
To find an unfindable "Exercise." 4 
Spending his time in hunting up Greek 
To play an old game called "Hide and go seek," — 
"And other things together with these," 
Reading such speeches as "Pericles' 
Over the Dead" (in more senses than one), 
But then, especially when it is done, 
Unhelped by a certain blue "poney" — 
These, I say, got the "hegemony" 5 

1 Sobriquet of Edward Tyrrel Channing, Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory, fat, 
and bloated. When visited after dinner in his study he is always found in a short 
jacket of white linen. 

2 Sobriquet of Josiah Shattuck Hartwell, H. C. 1844. He subsequently dropped 
his first name. 

3 C. C. Felton, Regent. 

4 As the Greek exercises were always translations from some Greek author, no 
sooner was one given out to the Class than someone set to work to find the passage; 
"when found" it was "made a note on" and copied by the whole class "verbatim" 
et accentalim. 

6 Isocrates, rj-ye/J-ovia. 

389 



Annals of the 

Over poor Corney and shrunk to a dot 

His rotund belly, inclining to pot. 

Just here our friend "Benny" x in very long hair 

With "Polar coordinates" 2 stirred up the fire. 

All the tutors and proctors, too, 

With shouts and yells had come to view 

This horrible, cannibal "stew." 

Hooper came divested of hat, 

Tower with the tread and tail of cat. 

"Lowe, the poor proctor, whose untutored" 3 mind 

Has scarcely left the primal green behind, 

"Crown him, crown him king of the dead!" 

The voice of the jiggering multitude said, 

Then Beck came up with horns on his head! 

But now the simmering broth was done 

Everyone flourished a "Commons" spoon. 

Ah! there swam the Freshman's soft brains, 

Streaked with his thousand cares and pains, 

Who from his rural school had come 

In all the pride of Freshmandom; 

He's first at prayers; with downcast eyes 

To please his tutor meekly tries, 

And all his thoughts are fixed on getting "eight," 

But Sophomores break his panes, sometimes his pate. 

And all the tutors grinned a ghastly grin, 

To see the poor devil so taken in. 

Oh! then I saw the horrid throng 

Pull out the brains with shout and song, 

Oh! then I saw our Potty strain 

To swallow down a "fresh-Soph's" 4 brain. 

Now flitting through the murky air 

With weeping and with wail, 
In naked feet and flying hair, 
With dusting rag and pail, 
Like Harpies all the goodies come 
Each mounted on her magic broom! 

1 Benjamin Peirce, the students' curse. 

2 See an instrument of torture prepared by the before-mentioned, called "Curves 
and Functions." 

3 Compare Pope, "Lo, the poor Indian," &c. 

4 The title of one who enters a year in advance. 

390 






Harvard Class of 1852 

Crowding and crowding on they came! 

And shrieking as they flew, 
Every old hag and sweeping dame, 

The antique and the new, 
Some in ancient and quaint costume, 
Each astride of her magic broom! 

I heard a loud voice, it sounded like Beck's, 
"Please to review, and prepare for the nex'!" 1 — 
I awoke with a start, and in some agitation, 
To find it all changed to a dull recitation. 
The vision ended well; 

God grant I have no more 
While Mills 2 shall ring the Chapel bell, 
And Cannon 3 ope the door! 

One of the debates dealt with the attack on the nunnery in 
Somerville, the opponents being Oliver, in justification of the 
attack, and D. E. Ware against it. The latter bore off the 
palm. 

That the position of Librarian was not one of unmeasured 
bliss may be gathered from the description given by the holder 
of the office, 4 in the Class Book: 

"The library to which I had the privilege to be attached, was 
accessible at all hours of the day and night, upon certain conditions 
established by custom. These conditions, which were kept to the 
letter, especially by that modest and unobtrusive set of individuals 
called Sophomores, were, step carefully over the mat outside and 
open the door without knocking. If in the winter time, leave the 
door open, if in summer, shut carefully with a loud slam. In either 
case, before walking across to enter the library, wipe the feet care- 
fully on the carpet. . . . Then commence a shuffling across the 
room, with the hat on, and whistling a popular air vehemently. If 
the librarian is working out a mathematical problem, or writing a 
theme, accompany the whistle with sundry thumps on the wall as 

1 These were the stereotyped phrases of Professor Beck at the end of each recitation. 

2 No student of the last dozen years will forget the indefatigable Mills, bellringer 
to the University. Who that rooms in the College yard can avoid seeing him carrying 
his "father-long-legs" body by seven-league strides to ring that accursed bell twelve 
times a day? On his weasel face is stamped an expression of nervous anxiety, a kind 
of horror lest the hour should come and he forget to ring! The pride of his life is not 
to forget it, and on dark December mornings he seems to pull with demoniac fury. 

' The grev-headed janitor whose name is thus corrupted from Kiernan. 
4 H. K. Oliver. 

391 



Annals of the 

you pass along. After entering the library proper, take down as 
many books as possible, put those you do not want back in the 
wrong places, upside down, wrong side before, and if you can spare 
the time inside out. Take away twice the number of books allowed 
you, without recording any of them. Leave as nearby as possible 
as you entered. When you return the books you do not intend to 
steal, walk up to the librarian's window and throw them in vio- 
lently, tipping over his inkstand and entirely ruining a book given 
by George Washington to the librarian's grandmother." 



THE KNIGHTS' PUNCH BOWL 

As the first volume of the records of the society known as the 
"K. P. B." has disappeared, we have no way of learning the 
year in which it was founded by ten members of '52, but a 
poem written by Williamson shows the Club to have been in 
existence in May, 185 1. The members were Coolidge, Head, 
Frank Hurd, Norris, Page, Richardson, Stedman, Wnitte- 
more, R. Ware and Williamson. Their insignia was un- 
doubtedly the bowl * itself, which still survives, of generous 
proportions, and of fair and flowered china. The tale of each 
meeting held at the rooms of the members in turn, was written 
by the scribe appointed for the evening, often in rhyming 
parody, and adorned with sketches and sometimes illumina- 
tions by the witty Stedman. 

The nine young men (Norris was never with them after 
graduation), who were studying for their respective profes- 
sions in Boston, continued their meetings, assembling first at 
hotels or clubs, and later, as one after another entered into the 
state of matrimony, holding their revels at the home of the 
proud householders in alternation with the re-unions at 
Young's or Parker's of the bachelor hosts. 

As we turn the pages, the graphic records, accompanied as 
they are by Stedman's clever sketches, bring the "fellows" 
so vividly before us that we feel as if we too had been present 
at the hilarious gatherings and listened to the tales, some- 
times sad, but always humorous, of the progress of the young 
men just beginning life. 

1 With other relics of the Class, the bowl will eventually be given to the College. 

392 






v, 

I 



(D @ 

CD ® 



1 X 



A". P. 5. 

1 STEDMAX 6 ROBERT WARE 

2 HEAD -j WILLIAMSON 

3 WHITTEMORE 8 HCRD 

4 P-^GE g RICHARD50K 

5 COOLIDGE IC SORRIS 









. 







. ..„ 









Harvard Class of 1852 

"The kind old voices and old faces 
My memory can quick retrace 
Around the board they take their places 
And smoke and drink their Bouillabaisse." 

Page was the first to marry, and the first meeting, possibly 
the fifth since graduation, of the K. P. B. recorded in the 
second volume, was at his fireside in 1855, where Calvin the 
Patriarch (his sobriquet) exhibited the baby, who was promptly 
elected an "honorary member," a scene duly depicted by 
Stedman under the title of "Charge of Infantry." Another 
drawing represents a blinded Cupid with four arrows and a 
cigar in his mouth bending over four headstones which bear 
the names of Page, Whittemore, Norris, and Coolidge, re- 
spectively, and below 

"Insatiate Archer! could not one suffice?" 

all the four named having succumbed to Eros. A farewell 
dinner was given to Coolidge on the eve of his marriage, 
whereat his toast was "Here's to the K. P. B. in our houses 
with the mississes upstairs and likin' it." 

A later meeting, on 26 October, i860, elicited the following 
lines : 

Again we meet around the rose-wood tree — 

A strong, long bumper to the K. P. B.! 

Summer is fled. From all the golden plain 

Toil's sturdy sons have stripped the ripened grain, 

No more the breezes skim the bending wheat, 

The trees have dropped their glories at our feet, 

Bob Ware comes back, — I don't know where he's been — 

And gallant Francis, if not heard, is seen — 

Charley — on civic or on rural ground 

He ne'er was wanting where old friends are found — 

And would that from the old red sandstone's bed 

One bird had come, the ante-deluge Head! 

Thy cheery visage, Coolidge! warms, with light 

Of glowing friendship radiate and bright, 

Sire by brevet, and ex officio sage, 

I kiss my cup to thee, Commander Page! 

Nor am I reck'ning here without our host, 

High o'er this glassy sea's extremest crest, 

Shine out with songs and quips and wanton gibes, 

Thou least of Pharisee and best of Scribes! 

393 



Annals of the 

Yet, if I might, to this round table's roar 
I'd add one Whit — just one — one Whit-the-more. 
Stay yet! I drink to him whose chair's unfilled, 
Whose voice keeps silence when the song is trilled, — 
Dear, gentle ghost! if, hovering in this air, 
Thy loving consciousness our joy do share — 
Come in the pause that follows song and jest, 
With reverent heart I bid thee to our feast. 

See, 't is complete! The wind, that wastes the leaves, 
Brings their last juices to the autumn sheaves. 
Blest be autumnal blasts and wintry cold, 
That lead our wanderers to this jolly fold, 
Dear Brothers all! With thrills of joy and pain 
I feel the glad old days all back again, 
Joyous I see the years, with changes fraught 
To our bright fellowship no cloud have brought! 
True 't is, no more we walk the College ways, 
No more we see the College chimneys blaze, 
No more at sound of proctors' boots we quake, 
The night's unhaunted by the morn's Romaic. 

I love to think that wheresoever fame 
Or fortune takes us, here we're still the same, 
Whate'er the rugged paths of life we roam, 
Here, at this board, we find our student home, 
Keep green the custom of the K. P. B., 
Seated and merry round the rose-wood tree. 

The last meeting recorded took place in January, 1865, and 
mentions that a third volume of the records had been started, 
but it is not forthcoming. Dana and Denny had in the mean- 
time been recruited into the ranks thinned by the matrimo- 
nial and paternal engagements of the members, but even with 
these additions the doom of the K. P. B. had sounded. Death 
took Norris, Page and Robert Ware. Head and Whittemore 
were rarely able to be present, and the gay little club came to 
a natural end. 



394 



Harvard Class of 1852 

PHI BETA KAPPA 

Motto. QiXoaocjiia Eton lYvfiepvrjTrjs 



Presidents, 1 



-1 

1887-1889 . . 
Vice-Presidents, 1 878-1 880 
1884-1887 
Treasurer, 1 869-1907 . . 
Recording Secretary, 1851-1852 



Joseph Hodges Choate 
James Bradley Thayer 
Joseph Hodges Choate 
James Bradley Thayer 
Henry Gardner Denny 
William Gardner Choate 



Members 

Cooke, Alfred Wellington 
Coolidge, Horace Hopkins 
Denny, Henry Gardner (1867) 
Gurney, Ephraim Whitman 
Hilliard, Francis William 
Thayer, James Bradley 
Thorndike, Samuel Lothrop 
Ware, Darwin Erastus 
Ware, William Robert 
Williamson, William Cross (1901) 
Chauncey (li 



Alger, Horatio 
Bonney, Charles Thomas 
Brown, Addison 
Brown, Henry William 
Cary, George Lovell (1891) 
Chase, Reginald Heber 
Cheever, David Williams 
Choate, Joseph Hodges 
Choate, William Gardner 
Collins, Josiah 

Wright, 



Edwin Smith Gregory, who came to Harvard from the 
Western Reserve College in the second term of the Senior 
year, was a member of the Western Reserve Chapter. 

The following songs were evidently written by Alger and 
Hilliard on their admission into the Society: 



Air. 



SONG 

(Alger) 

- Crambambuli. 



Come, Brothers, lift the song of gladness, 
Let mirth and music rule the hours, 

Far hence be every thought of sadness, 
At length the golden prize is ours. 

We gladly join your noble band, 
And while we grasp each proffered hand 
Our hearts with friendly warmth expand, 
With warmth expand. 

395 



Annals of the 

A night of festive joy and pleasure 

May well succeed a day of toil, 
In delving deep for Learning's treasure 

Tonight we'll burn no midnight oil. 

Full long we've knelt at Learning's shrine, 
Tonight the laurel and the vine 
About our brows shall intertwine, 
Shall intertwine. 

The hours of Youth on rapid pinions flying 

Soon fade into the silent Past, 
Then let us seize the joys around us lying, 

Ere yet our sky is overcast. 

Then while our hearts with joy are light, 
We will not heed Time's rapid flight, 
But greet with songs the morning bright, 
The morning bright. 



SONG 

Philosophy the Guide of Life 

(Hilliard) 

Air. — Auld Lang Syne. 

Philosophy — that ancient word, 

Turns every visage grave, 
The sound old Greek full often heard 

When Stoic sage would rave. 

Philosophy, invoked to guide, 
If only she will steer 

Each bark adown the stream shall slide 
Nor rocks nor quicksands fear. 

Philosophy, the guide of life, 

Oh! — may she ever be, 
When passions war in deadly strife, 

A true Philosophy. 

God-given, Conscience-blest, illumed 
With reason's lightning ray 

And oh! still clearer in the dawn 
Of Revelation's day. 

396 



Harvard Class of 1852 



Sweet is the tie that binds in one 

Reason and jollity, 
Learning in marriage joins with fun, 

Leads Science on a spree. 



Then let us dream of coming days 
When torrid suns shall burn, 

And learned men, by dusty ways, 
To college scenes return. 



Across the groaning board behold 
Two trembling hands unite, 

Two voices now grown weak and old, 
Eyes half bereft of sight, 



And shout aloud to think that so, 

As after years roll on, 
With us the love shall ever go 

That college scenes have won. 



PIERIAN SODALITY 

Motto: Sit Musa Lyrce Solers 

Friday, April 13 th, 18 

/ have the honor to inform you that you 
have been chosen into the "Pierian Sodality." 
Your attendance is requested this evening 
at their room over Mrs. Dana' ' s store opposite 
the house of Edward Everett, at quarter before 
eight precisely. 

Please bring your violin. 

Stevens Parker 

Pres. P. Sodality 

Thus reads the summons to a new member! 

We give the only offices held by the members of 1852: 



President, 1851-52 . ■ . 
Vice-Presidents, 1850-51 
1851-52 
Secretaries, 1849-50 . . 
1850-51 . . 



Austin Stickney 

Austin Stickney 

Horatio H. F. Whittemore 

Austin Stickney 

H. H. F. Whittemore 



397 



Annals of the 

Members 

Samuel H. Hurd Counter basso 

Horace Richardson Flute 

Austin Stickney Violin 

H. H. F. Whittemore Flute, Octave and Horn 

William C. Williamson Violin 

PI ETA 

A Society called the Pi Eta existed for a few years, of which, 
as in the case of many other short-lived clubs, no records are 
to be found. It was composed chiefly, President Eliot remem- 
bers, of undergraduates, who were not elected into the In- 
stitute of 1770, and consequently, most of its members failed 
to be taken into the Hasty Pudding Club. Dr. Oliver recalls 
that Sidney Willard 1 belonged to the Pi Eta, because he recol- 
lects seeing him attach the notice of a meeting to the outside 
of University Hall, where it was the custom to post the an- 
nouncements of Club gatherings. 

The existence of this Society was unknown to the founders 
of the Pi Eta Society of the present day (1919), which was 
established in 1866. 

PSI UPSILON 

In October, 1850, a petition was sent to the Faculty by the 
Senior and Junior Classes asking for permission to establish a 
Harvard Chapter of the Psi Upsilon. The request was granted 
in November, 1851. 

Addison Brown was chiefly instrumental in the founding of 
the new Chapter, and the story is told in his own words : 2 

At the beginning of my Junior year (at Harvard) Justus Smith 
of Ashfield, Mass., who had spent three years at Amherst College 
and was one year in advance of me, joined the Senior Class at Har- 
vard. I had known him as an ardent "Psi Ups." at Amherst, and 
his enthusiasm for that society continued unabated. He was a 
born organizer and of much social attractiveness. He was very 
urgent that a chapter of that Society should be established at Har- 

1 At a Class Supper after graduation, Sidney Willard toasted the Pi Eta. 

2 From Autobiographical Records of his College Days left in manuscript by Judge 
Brown. His Freshman year was passed at Amherst College. 

398 



Harvard Class of 1852 

vard, and that I should undertake the selection of desirable members 
from my Class while he should from the senior class. 

This was carried out, each of us selecting about 20 or 25 members 
from our respective classes and the chapter was called the Alpha 
Chapter, as that name had not been previously appropriated. The 
Society was very successful for some 10 or 15 years. Smith was 
president or archon the first year; Collins and myself the second 
year, that is while I was a Senior; and Edward King during the fol- 
lowing year (1852-3). He has become a prominent banker; was 
president of the N. Y. Stock Exchange, and has been for 35 yrs. 
past President of the Union Trust Company. A very considerable 
library was gathered in the Society rooms, facing on Harvard Square; 
but several years afterwards, through some reasons never learned by 
me, the Chapter was dissolved and the Library scattered, I know not 
where. 

In October and November, 1851, the Alpha Delta Phi applied to 
the College Faculty to suppress the Society, but after hearing D. E„ 
Ware and myself as opposed, we were sustained. 

As no catalogue of the Alpha Chapter has been found, the 
names of the following members only are known, who were 
in '52: 

Addison Brown 

George Lovell Cary 

Josiah Collins 

Calvin Gates Page 

Darwin Erastus Ware 

Archons {or Presidents) in 18 51-2 
Addison Brown and Josiah Collins 

Members of the Society were known to one another by an 
especial handclasp. 



PORCELLIAN CLUB 

Motto: Dum Vivimus Vivamus 

Deputy Marshal .... Samuel Lothrop Thorndike 

Librarian George Augustus Peabody 

Secretary Samuel Lothrop Thorndike 

399 



Annals of the 



Members 

John Ellis Blake George Augustus Peabody 

Peter Chardon Brooks Edward Ellerton Pratt 

John Sylvester Gardiner Paul Joseph Revere 

William Edward Howe Knyvet Winthrop Sears 

(Honorary Member, LL.B. Nathaniel Devereux Silsbee 

1853) George Brimmer Sohier 
Samuel Lothrop Thorndike 

The interesting story of the origin of the Porcellian Club 
may be found in the Publications of The Colonial Society of 
Massachusetts, x. 247-252; and a description of a satirical 
Coat of Arms appears in xix. 156-158. 



RUMFORD SOCIETY 

The Rumford Society was founded on the sixteenth of Novem- 
ber, 1848, by a few members of the Junior Class who were 
interested in Chemistry and who wished to enlarge their 
opportunities for the study of Natural Philosophy. It was 
named, of course, in honor of Count Rumford. A room in 
the basement of Massachusetts Hall (No. 3) for a labora- 
tory was granted by the Faculty, and the new Society was 
further presented with all the apparatus which had formerly 
belonged to the Davy and Hermetic Clubs. It was equipped 
with appliances suitable for the pursuit of the aims of the 
Society. 

The laboratory was the scene of chemical experiments, and 
there were probably no officers nor regular meetings, except 
an annual lecture delivered by some distinguished chemist. 
Dr. Charles Thomas Jackson (H. C. W1829) was the lecturer 
for one year, and the meeting was probably held in the Com- 
mon Room of Massachusetts Hall, which was at the westerly 
end of the building. 

The Catalogue, issued in 185 1, tells us that the nucleus of 
a library had been formed. The lists of members in the Cata- 
logue comprised men in the Classes of 1850, 185 1, 1852, and 
1853. The Society probably did not survive the last named 
year. 

400 



Harvard Class of 1852 

President William Fiske Wheeler 

Vice-President .... Chauncey Wright 

Secretary Henry Kemble Oliver 

Curator Joseph White Sprague 

Secretary and Curator . . Horatio Hancock Fiske 

Whittemore 

Members 

Horace Hopkins Coolidge Paul Joseph Revere 

Charles Francis Dana Horace Richardson 

Henry Hill Downes Joseph White Sprague 1 

George Edward Head Charles Ellery Stedman 

Frederic Percival Leverett Charles Wentworth Upham 

Edward Horatio Neal Robert Ware 

Henry Kemble Oliver William Fiske Wheeler 

George Augustus Peabody Horatio Hancock Fiske Whittemore 

Samuel Miller Quincy Chauncey Wright 

THE '52 DINING CLUB 

In February, 1890, Dr. Stedman gave a dinner at his house on 
Monadnock Street, Dorchester, at which were present the 
following members of the Class: 

Coolidge 

Denny 

Hurd, F. W. 

Pratt 

Stone 

Thorndike 

Williamson 

It was agreed that the eight there assembled should form 
a Dining Club to meet monthly during the season, the number 
being limited to eight as forming the most agreeable size for 
a table. 

The plan was carried into immediate effect, a month being 
assigned to each; on the resignation of Stone, Thayer was 
elected to take his place, and later Oliver. 

The Club was discontinued in 191 1, when but three of the 
members were living. 

1 Sprague was so much addicted to chemical experiments that one of the Class 
wrote after graduation that he wished he could ever think of him without the inevitable 
accompaniment of "a horrid smell." 

4OI 



Annals of the 



WATER CELEBRATION 

The installation of the Cochituate Water Supply in Boston 
was celebrated by a procession and appropriate exercises. 
The Harvard undergraduates marched in the procession. 
The following is a copy of the Program: 

WATER CELEBRATION 

Boston, October 25, 1846. 

EXERCISES AT THE FOUNTAIN. 
I. Hymn By George Russell, Esq. 

To be sung by the Handel and Haydn Society, and the Audience. 
Tune, Old Hundred. 

Eternal! uncreated God! 

Source of our being! Fount of love! 
Our songs ascend to thine abode; 

Thou art the joy of worlds above. 

The Sea is thine: — at thy command, 
From darkness deep, its waters came: 

The "Sons of God" beheld thy hand, 
And in loud chorus praised thy Name. 

Rivers, and lakes, and springs declare, 
That Thou art wise, and kind, and good; 

Both man and beast thy bounties share; 
Thou givest drink: — Thou givest food. 

Behold! from yonder distant lake, 

A stream our city now supplies! 
We bid it welcome: — come partake: 

Today its waters greet our eyes! 

Let old and young, and rich and poor, 

Join in one full harmonious song! 
Let every tongue its praises pour, 

And swell the Anthem loud and long! 

II. Prayer By Rev. Daniel Sharp, D.D. 

III. Ode. . By James Russell Lowell, Esq. 

To be sung by the School Children 
402 



Harvard Class of 1852 



My name is Water: I have sped 

Through strange dark ways untried before, 
By pure desire of friendship led, 

Cochituate's Ambassador; 
He sends four royal gifts by me, 
Long life, health, peace, and purity. 



II. 

I'm Ceres' cupbearer; I pour, 

For flowers and fruits and all their kin, 
Her crystal vintage, from of yore 

Stored in old Earth's selectest bin, 
Flora's Falernian ripe, since God 
The winepress of the deluge trod. 



III. 

In that far isle whence, ironwilled, 

The new world's sires their bark unmoored, 

The fairies' acorn cups I filled 

Upon the toadstool's silver board, 

And, 'neath Heme's oak, for Shakspeare's sight, 

Strewed moss and grass with diamonds bright. 



IV. 

No fairies in the Mayflower came, 
And, lightsome as I sparkle here, 

For mother Bay State, busy dame, 

I've toiled and drudged this many a year, 

Throbbed in her Engine's iron veins, 

Twirled myriad spindles for her gains. 



V. 

I, too, can weave; the warp I set 

Through which the sun his shuttle throws, 
And, bright as Noah saw it, yet 

For you the arching rainbow glows, 
A sight in Paradise denied 
To unfallen Adam and his bride. 

403 



Annals of the 

VI. 

When winter held me in his grip, 

You seized and sent me o'er the wave, 
Ungrateful! in a prison-ship; 

But I forgive, not long a slave, 
For, soon as summer south winds blew, 
Homeward I fled disguised as dew. 

VII. 

For countless services I'm fit, 

Of use, of pleasure, and of gain, 
But lightly from all bonds I flit, 

Incapable as fire of stain; 
From mill and washtub I escape 
And take in heaven my proper shape. 

VIII. 

So free myself, to-day, elate 

I come from far o'er hill and mead, 
And here, Cochituate's Envoy, wait 

To be your blithesome Ganymede, 
And brim your cups with nectar true 
That never will make slaves of you. 

IV. Report of Hon. Nathan Hale in Behalf of the 

Water Commissioners. 
V. Address by the AIayor. 
VI. Water Let On. 
VII. Chorus From the Oratorio of Elijah. 

Thanks be to God! He laveth the thirsty land. The waters gather; 

they rush along; they are lifting their voices. 
The stormy billows are high, their fury is mighty; But the Lord is 

above them, and Almighty. 



404 



Harvard Class of 1852 



THE RAILROAD JUBILEE 

The extension of the Canadian Railroad to Boston was cele- 
brated by a Jubilee and procession on September seventeenth, 
1 85 1. The Harvard undergraduates marched in the pro- 
cession. A big tent was erected on the Common near the head 
of Winter Street and the Governor General of Canada, who 
was present, made a speech. Thaxter was one of the Marshals 
and invited all the Harvard men to his house after the celebra- 
tion was over to partake of refreshments. He also gave a 
dinner to the other Marshals on the second of October, 1851, 
for which he wrote an Ode. 

ODE 

Air — Fair Harvard 

We '11 pledge in a bumper of sparkling Champagne 

A health to old Harvard once more, 
And the golden-hued glass to the dregs we will drain 

As the Bacchanals drained it of yore. 
No lotus-crowned goblet invites us to sip 

The draught th' Egyptian 1 bespoke, 
Yet the nectar of mortals we hold to the lip, 

And the Lares of Harvard invoke. 

A health to dear Harvard! The pledge we'll renew! 

Affection our homage demands, 
And the God of the vine-leaves, still loyal and true, 

The throbs of the heart ne'er withstands. 
Here 's to thee, Alma Mater! for thee we beseech 

Thy children the orison raise, 
Let a paean from leal hearts th' empyrean reach, 

Our tribute of honor and praise. 

As we pledge to our Mother the roseate draught, 

We '11 swear that our friendship's for aye, 
And a prayer from the heart shall sincerity waft 

That like Time it may never decay. 
No conqu'ror can sever the Gordian knot 

That our hearts shall forever entwine, 
And tho' oceans divide us, 't will ne'er be forgot 

When we are joined in the banquet lang syne. 

1 Cleopatra. 
405 



Annals of the 



CLASS ANNIVERSARIES 

No record is to be found of any Class Meeting or Class Supper 
in 1853, although Thorndike told Denny that he remembered 
attending a supper in that year. 

The Class Suppers or Dinners took place thereafter as fol- 
lows; a fuller record being given of those which fell on especial 
anniversaries: 



i8S4 
185S 
1856 

1857 

1858 

1859 
i860 
1862 
1863 
1864 
1865 
1866 
1867 



1869 

1870 
1871 
1872 

1877 

1882 

1883 

1884 

1885 

1886 

1886 1 

1887 

1888 

1889 

1890 



Winthrop House 



No regular dinner, but seven met at 
Young's Coffee House 

Parker's 

Harvard Hall 



Parker's . 
Union Club 



Parker's 

Young's Hotel 

Parker's 

Joshua B. Smith's, 13 Bulfinch Place, 

Boston 

Joshua B. Smith's, 13 Bulfinch Place, 

Boston 

Parker's 

Union Club 

Parker's 

Union Club 

Young's Hotel 



27 present 
30 " 



22 

20 
19 
13 
10 
10 

10 
11 

10 

10 

8 

3 

7 

11 

28 

12 

10 

6 

7 

7 

20 

7 
10 
10 

9 



1 An additional Dinner, in December, to celebrate the Two Hundred and Fiftieth 
Anniversary of the founding of the College. 

406 



Harvard Class of 1852 



1 891 Young's Hotel 10 present 

1892 " " 21 

1893 " " 9 

1894 " " 11 

1895 " " 10 

1896 " " 8 

1897 " " 8 

1898 " " 

1899 " " 

1900 " " 

1901 " " 

1902 " " 

1903 " " 



7 
4 
7 
5 

5 



ESPECIAL ANNIVERSARIES 

1852 

The graduation Class Supper was held at the Winthrop 
House, 1 Boston, at quarter after ten o'clock on July twenty- 
first, 1852. Joseph H. Choate had been already chosen Presi- 
dent of the occasion, as we have shown, — Josiah Porter, 
Senior Vice-President, Quincy, second, Stedman, third, and 
Fisher, fourth Vice-President. Thaxter, odist, and Neal and 
Robert Ware were toastmasters, with Addison Brown as 
chorister. 

The first toast of the evening was of course to the Class of 
1852; those who will, may read the record of the other toasts 
in the Class Book. Thaxter's Ode was sung as given below. 

Air — Fair Harvard. 

A tear dims the eye as we speak our farewell 

In sadness, dear Mother, to thee, 
And a sigh shall our heartfelt emotion foretell 

That from thy loved thraldom we're free. 
Yet "there's truth in the wine cup" the moralist swore, 

And with melody witching and light, 
In the silver-crest foam we will pledge thee once more, — 

Here 's to thee, Alma Mater, to-night! 



1 The Winthrop House was on the northeast corner of Boylston and Tremont 
Streets, opposite to where the Hotel Touraine now (1918) stands. 

407 



Annals of the 

Oh! the Future's dim Phantoms young hearts may appall, 

And its Shadows may seem to dismay, 
But our Lethe, — the grape-juice, — shall conquer them all 

As the Night is o'ercome by the Day. 
As when Troubadour-minstrelsy summoned the Knight 

His leader's commands to obey, 
Will we drain our last "Stirrup Cup" roseate and bright 

Ere we plunge in the world's fearful fray! 

Our star may gleam darkly, our sky be o'ercast, 

As we enter the Battle of Life, 
Yet the Rainbow we '11 hail when the tempest has passed, 

And the Dove tells the end of the strife. 
But the Future has gold-tints, and oft for the shrine 

Of the Ocean-born Goddess, Love's Queen, 
The Rose and the Myrtle we '11 tenderly twine, 

When Beauty presides o'er the scene. 

A health to Old Harvard! Let fancy renew 

The Vision to Memory dear: 
To the fairy-hued Present a love-pledge is due, 

Yet the Past claims its tribute, — a tear. 
Then drink to Old Harvard again and again! 

Let our greeting be heard from afar, 
Till the echo is startled at sound of our strain, 

And drowned by our wild Hip Hurrah! 

When we meet once again, though 't were years since we clasped 

The hand of a classmate of old, 
Our hearts shall still throb as when last it was grasped 

With a joy ne'er the Sybarite told. 
Boon welcome to brother then! Fair be the breeze 

That wafts to our roof-tree a friend ! 
Bright burn the hearth-fire! Drained to the lees 

Be the glass where the ruby-tints blend! 

Farewell to thee, Harvard! We leave thy dear halls, 

And vain the attempt to conceal 
The tear drop that starts as we turn from thy walls, 

Or the sighs that our sadness reveal. 
We may wander through fairer and lovelier climes 

More meet for the poet's fond lay, 
Yet a souvenir still of these happier times 

Shall memory cherish for aye. 

408 






Harvard Class of 1852 

And oh! let this grasp of the hand seal our vow, 

We are firm in love's chains as of yore, 
And swear by this cup, that united as now, 

False Discord shall part us no more. 
We are Friends, — we are Brothers! And oft as we think 

Of the Past with its pleasure and pain, 
To the days of our boyhood a health we will drink, — 

We will pledge "Fifty-Two" yet again! 



Silsbee's oldest Madeira was brought forward and passed 
from hand to hand, each one tasting and stating his future 
profession in life, so far as he could judge, in the following 
order as they sat at table: 



Williams, Law 
R. Ware, Medicine 
McKim, Merchant 
Trimble, Uncertain 
Stedman, Medicine 
H. W. Brown, Teacher 
Coolidge, Law 
W. G. Choate, Law 
Crowley, Law 
Downes, Merchant 
Howe, Law 
Washburn, Teacher 
Chase, Uncertain 
Cary, Minister 
Thaxter, Law 



Porter, Uncertain 

Cheever, Minister 

Willard, Law 

Buttrick, Law 

Richardson, Medicine 

Sprague would not drink or say what 

Gardiner, Uncertain 

Revere, Merchant 

Curtis, Merchant 

Este, Farmer 

Dwight, Engineer 

Page, Medicine 

Anderson, Law 

Head must do something 

Wheeler, Manufacturer 



A. Brown, Medicine or Ministry 

Greenwood, Law 

Quincy, Law 

Stickney, Teacher 

Whittemore, Medicine 

F. W. Hurd, Law 

Fisher, Law 

Alger, a middle man, was unde- 
cided between Teaching and 
Divinity 

Horr, Teacher 

Thomas, Medicine 



King, Law 

W. R. Ware, Teacher 

D. E. Ware, Law 

Upham, Law 

Oliver, Medicine 

Bonney, Medicine 

Hilliard, Teaching and Ministry 

Swift, Merchant 

F. P. Leverett, Medicine 

Collins, Law 

Neal, Law 

Thayer, Teacher and Law 



J. H. Choate, Law 
409 



Annals of the 

A bouquet from the table was sent to Cooke, already on his 
death-bed. After many more toasts and songs they separated 
at 4.30 a. m., having all joined in "Auld Lang Syne." 

A tradition existed that a bottle of Madeira was put by 
from the original Class Supper to be opened by the last sur- 
vivor. Mr. Denny enquired into the matter, writing to Dr. 
Page (son and namesake of the first Class Secretary), to ask 
whether the bottle might be among his father's effects, or any 
reference to it in his papers. Nothing relating to the occurrence 
could be found, and the question as to whether or not a bottle 
was sealed and preserved has never been satisfactorily decided. 



1854 

Many of the Class gathered on Commencement Day in the 
rooms of Joe Choate, then studying Law in Cambridge, and 
called in a body on the Class Baby, as has been told in the 
sketch of its parent, Huntington. Also, they all kissed it! No 
wonder the infant's life was short! 

The Class met in the evening at the Winthrop House, and 
sat down to a supper, Porter presiding. The following mem- 
bers were present: 

Arnold, S. H. Hurd, Buttrick, Head, Stedman, Bonney, 
Swift, Quincy, H. W. Brown, F. W. Hurd, Fisher, Chase, 
Porter, Gurney, Page, W. R. Ware, Whittemore, Oliver, Wil- 
liamson, Richardson, Upham, W. G. Choate, Wright, Crowley, 
Downes, Thayer, D. E. Ware. The speeches were good. 
The classmates were in excellent spirits, and the whole evening 
was passed pleasantly and agreeably. It was the unanimous 
opinion that the Class should have a good dinner next year, — 
something more than a collation. 

1855 

The Triennial Class Supper was heralded by the following 
notices : 

Boston, July 2d, 1855. 

Class of '52! 

Know by this, and remember that on next Commencement night, 
July 1 8th, at the close for most of us of our three years of professional 

410 



Harvard Class of 1852 

study, there will be a grand jubilee and Class-Supper. Come one, 
come all! And tell us beforehand of your coming, that we may pre- 
pare accordingly. One night more for Auld Lang Syne! 

C. G. Page, 

E. W. Gurney, 

D. E. Ware, 

Class Committee. 

In a note from Darwin Ware, Joe Choate was asked to preside, 
Ware writing that "Once a President, always a President" 
was the doctrine of the Class. 

There were thirty present, and Thaxter complied with the 
request for an Ode. 

Air. ■ — Fair Harvard. 

"The old time comes o'er us." The triad of years 

Since we gave the last grasp of the hand 
Seems forgot, with its offspring of joys and of fears, 

As again with each other we stand. 
The tear of our. parting is changed to a smile, 

As we view the old faces again; 
And the cup which together we tasted erewhile, 

Once more to the dregs will we drain! 

Have we broken the idol that once we revered 

With a spirit of honor and truth? 
Is it vanished, that vision that brightly appeared 

In the earlier days of our youth? 
Does the flame of our friendship burn fast as of yore, 

Ere unwilling we severed the spell? 
Was that word but a vapor? No! from the heart's core 

Came the tongue's all-unwilling "Farewell." 

The eye seeks in vain for many a brow 

Familiar long since to the sight; 
But we pledge them a health and a happiness now, 

And a destiny cloudless and bright. 
A memory for those no more with us seen, 

Who sleep in the night of the grave; 
And a prayer that their souls, all calm and serene, 

Returned to the Being who gave. 

411 









Annals of the 

The brow will be furrowed, the frame will be bent, 

As time steals apace on our path; 
Yet that spirit of love, which its influence lent 

Years agone, will still sit by our hearth. 
We will mind our old covenant, — heart to heart plight, — 

Whether joyful or saddened our day, — 
By the roseate goblet that tempts us to-night, — 

We are brothers — we swear it! — for aye! 

1862 

The Tenth Anniversary brought together the appropriate 
number of ten, who met at the Union Club with Williamson in 
the chair. 

Thorndike sang "Our Heroes," and proposed "the memory 
of Charley Upham," which was drunk standing and in silence, 
and Bonney gave "Our absent classmates in the field, may the 
Lord cover their heads in the day of battle." 

The Ode was written for the occasion by Thaxter. 

Air — Fair Harvard. 

The brow may be furrowed a little, so clear 

When we stood in the hallowed tree's shade, 
And sought not to stifle the boy's honest tear 

As our oath of life-friendship we made. 
A decade of years brings together again 

The rovers who then met to part, 
And the vow of the lads is held fast by the men, 

For their covenant was of the heart. 

Yet all are not here. Shenandoah's green vale, 

Potomac's blue waves, break in view, 
And there are our brothers who shrink not nor quail, 

To honor and loyalty true. 
On the field of the fray, in the keep of the South, 

'"52" had her patriot sons, 
And her Cannoneer stands by his battery's mouth 

Where the swoll'n Chickahominy runs. 

Alma Mater! Our thoughts wander back to the past, 

And again on thy greensward we stand; 
On glides the dream-picture, too brilliant to last, 

'Neath the spell of Memoria's wand. 
412 



Harvard Class of 1852 

We 're Freshmen once more! The blood courses quick 
Through the veins! 'T is electric, the thrill! 

But the old clock of Chronos with positive tick 
Bids the dream and the dreamers be still. 1 

One tear for the dead! That in regions above 

Their spirits are dwelling, we pray, 
Oh, green are their memories! God's holy love 

Receive them, immortal, for aye! 
One cheer for our soldier-lads! hip, hip, hurrah! 

Now the cup of the wassail renew 
Till in yonder blue sky burns the pale morning star! 

But one toast — ■ the best — "'' '52!" 

1863 

The Class Supper of 1863 was brought to a premature end. 
A general fear of Draft Riots was in the air, and it increased 
almost to a panic. Judge Haven went to the room where '52 
was holding revel, and urged the members of the Class to go to 
the State House, already garrisoned by the Cadets, to help in 
its defence in case of attack. The festive dinner was adjourned 
about eleven o'clock. 

The Classes of 1849, 1852 and 1857 spent the night on the 
floor of the State House. 

1864 

To the meeting of the ensuing year, Williamson contributed a 
song in memory of the event: 

The last time here this class did meet 1 , . 

Boo Hoo J 

An awful riot filled the street 
But here, within, the scene was sweet, 
Boo Hoo, Boo Hoo, Boo Hoo, Boo Hoo, Boo Hoo! 

1 Another stanza was substituted for this, which so plainly indicated that the 
Class feeling was stronger than all else that we insert it: 

In the ranks of the foe are our classmates of yore, 

And to them we send greeting to-night, 
For we love the warm hearts that we cherished before 

Our land was ablaze with war-light. 
In sorrow, not anger, their names we recall, 

And long for the hour of the end, 
When one grasp of the hand says, " Oblivion for all, 

Dear Brother — bold Southron — true Friend!" 

413 



Annals of the 

Into our feast in martial trim \ , . 
BooHoo! } bls 

Stalked R . . . }, a warrior grim. 
All mirth was hushed, the lights burned dim, 
Boo Hoo, Boo Hoo, Boo Hoo, Boo Hoo, Boo Hoo! 

" Come out and man the city walls ! 1 , . 
Boo Hoo! j bls 

"Come out prepared for deadly brawls! 
"Come out, 't is William Barlow calls!" 
Boo Hoo, Boo Hoo, Boo Hoo, Boo Hoo, Boo Hoo! 

We left the platter and the cup; 1 , . 
Boo Hoo! ) bls 

We took of the rum a parting sup, 
Then sadly marched to the State House up. 
Boo Hoo, Boo Hoo, Boo Hoo, Boo Hoo, Boo Hoo! 

'T was not until the morning broke 

Boo Hoo! 
We first began to smell the joke, 
How riots and suppers end in smoke, 
Boo Hoo, Boo Hoo, Boo Hoo, Boo Hoo, Boo Hoo! 

Moral 

The glorious Class of '52 

Boo Hoo! 
The glorious Class of '52 
Won't leave this time till supper's through! 
Boo Hoo, Boo Hoo, Boo Hoo, Boo Hoo, Boo Hoo, Boo Hoo! 

1877 

The Twenty-fifth Anniversary brought out twenty-eight of 
the Class. Joe Choate was in the chair; his brother, with 
Fisher and Waring, Anderson and Addison Brown, also came 
on from New York, and once more Williamson wrote the poem. 

Twenty-fifth Anniversary of the Class of 1852 

Tomorrow comes Commencement-day, 

Come too, thou simple swain, 
Hunt up thy pipe, look in and play 

That old, familiar strain. 

1 Richardson; one of his favorite songs was "William Barlow." 
414 






Harvard Class of 1852 

What matter though the air it sings 

All sense, all music lack, 
So much the better! if it brings 

Old scenes, old faces back. 

Though five and twenty years have past 

Since this poor pipe I blew, 
"Time's noblest offspring is the last," 

'T is good for fifty, two. 

I see the dear, the dingy halls, 

With umber walks between, 
Just as of old the sunshine crawls 

Along the close-clipped green. 

As up yon steps in thought I go 
What shadows haunt the place! 

On every door the names I know, 
Each window has its face. 

Here, if I knock, I know what voice, 
Will shout a bluff "Come in!" 

It makes my inmost soul rejoice 
To hear that cheerful din. 

Come, let us join the mighty rush 
That throngs the chapel stair, 

And hear again the gentle gush 
Of Doctor Francis' prayer. 

Ah! honest mirth! what happy troops 

Across the landscape sail, 
The proctor with an eye for groups, 

The goody with her pail. 

Here still the studious wheel goes round 
With its old buzz and clank, 

And every year some corn is ground 
By Joseph Lovering's crank. 

The dear old Mother! Here she waits 

In festive gown and cap, 
A smile of welcome in her plaits, 

She spreads her ample lap. 

415 



Annals of the 

No infants will she have today 

With all their rout and noise; 
She sends the youngest-born away, 

She wants her grown-up boys. 

See, as they come, with eager view 

Each manly face she marks; 
These are her sons of fifty-two, 

The ones she had by Sparks. 

Classmates! upon a night like this, 
While youth's gay dreams return, 

Let no dark phantom mar our bliss, 
No disappointment burn — 

That heights whereon we strove to stand 

Still in dim distance tower, 
That when our rainbow came to hand 

It proved to be a shower; 

That homeward marching from life's strife, 

With eyes a little queer, 
We found the golden wine of life 

Had turned out lager beer; 

That joys and loves we thought to grasp 

Have left us to deplore 
Habe geliebet, bring the asp — 

There lives no pleasure more — 

The light that round this table flows 
Time's darkest power o'erwhelms, 

Back to its source youth's fountain flows, 
Beneath the pleasant elms. 

A health to all about this board 

Whose merry tongues I hear, 
And to those lips that speak no word 

The unseen faces near. 

Though many different, devious ways 

Our vagrant feet may range, 
God keep us all in honor's praise 

And keep our hearts from change. 

416 



Harvard Class of 1852 

1888 

A rather singular feature of the Class Supper of 1888 was that 
four of those present were Presidents : J. H. Choate of the 
Alumni Association, Cheever of the Massachusetts Medical 
Society, Richardson of the Chess Club, and Williamson of the 
Boston School Committee. 

1892 

As the time for the Fortieth anniversary celebration drew near, 
it was realized that many of the Class who lived far away 
might be deterred from coming by the expense of the journey, 
and a fund was therefore raised which was accepted in the 
same brotherly spirit in which it was offered, the result being 
that twenty-one met together once more at the Class Supper 
at Young's Hotel. They were Alger, Bonney, Bradlee, Addi- 
son Brown, Cary, Cheever, Coolidge, Denny, Dwight, Fisher, 
Gregory, F. W. Hurd, S. H. Hurd, W. C. Leverett, Perry, 
Stickney, Thorndike, Vinal, Wallace, Darwin Ware and Wil- 
liamson, and were seated as follows: 

S. H. Hurd Gregory 
Bradlee Williamson 

Cary A. Brown 

Perry Fisher 

Stickney D. E. Ware 

Denny Thorndike 

Coolidge 
Bonney F. W. Hurd 

Leverett Wallace 

Vinal Cheever 

Alger Dwight 

Gregory and Leverett were present for the first time since 
the Twenty-fifth anniversary, Vinal for the first time since 
graduation, and deep was the regret of Hilliard that he could 
not be present. He sent a quatrain: 

Though severed, some by bloody war, 

By distance lost to view, 
A band of brothers still have we 

The Class of '52. 

417 



Annals of the 

Again, as on their first Class Day, Alger wrote the Ode: 

O friends and classmates, true and tried, 
How long it seems, since, side by side, 
With girded loins and earnest face, 
We stood equipped for life's great race! 
To us it seemed a happy dream, 
The four years passed in Academe, — 
Four happy years of calm content, 
Our serious tasks with pleasures blent; 
Four years that as they rolled along 
On heart and brain left impress strong, 
And kindled in each glowing eye 
A hopeful fire, a purpose high. 
When on the border-land we stood, 
Life's serious duties yet untried, 
The sun shone bright on hill and wood, 
The landscape all seemed glorified. 

Those vanished years, those happy days, 

Seen through the dim, autumnal haze, 

Leave in our hearts, remembered yet, 

The shadow of a vain regret. 

No longer boys, but toil-worn men, 

We meet around the board again. 

We meet and pass in calm review 

The dreams that no fruition saw, — 

Vague aspirations, lofty hopes, 

Youth nurtured, that are now no more. 

Grown older now, we will not mourn 

Those exhalations of the dawn; 

The heroes that we hoped to be 

Will never live in History. 

No knights or paladins are we, 

Plain toilers only in the mart; 

Yet let us hope on life's broad stage 

That we have played a worthy part. 

When Alma Mater, dear to all, 

Her sons shall pass in glad review, 

We trust her heart will thrill with pride, 

As pass the boys of '52 

Loyal in heart, in purpose true. 

What we have learned be ours to teach; 

And may an ever-strengthening tie 

Bind each to all, and all to each. 

418 



Harvard Class of 1852 

Chorus, in which all the Class joined, to the tune of "High- 
land Laddie," sung by Denny: 

Oh where, tell me where, is the Class of '52? 

Oh where, tell me where, is the Class of '52? 

On their Fortieth anniversary, to Class and College true, 

They're drinking to the College and the Class of '52! 

Suppose, oh! suppose that some cruel, cruel fate 

From their Class some good fellows the sea shall separate, 

In London, Paris, Tokio, Canton, or Timbuctoo, 

Tonight they are drinking to the Class of '52. 

Now here's to the absent of the Class of '52. 

When three short decades more shall bring the seventh 

decennial round, 
And but one, only one, of the glorious Class is found, 
The staunch old last survivor, to Class and College true, 
Shall pour the old Madeira and drink to '52. 
Here's to the last survivor of the Class of '52. 

Later in the evening, in answer to the Class, Denny sang to 
the air "White Cockade," the Class joining in the chorus. 

In '48, the records say, 

A brave young Class went Cambridge way; 
With four years' work, and some play too. 
They were full-grown alumni in '52. 

Chorus — A jolly old Class is '52, 

You drink with me, I'll drink with you; 
Look the whole quinquennial through, 
You'll never find a better one than '52. 

At war's alarm and their country's call, 
A score went forward, six to fall; 
And the memory still of the boys in blue 
Is fresh in the hearts of '52. 
A jolly old Class, &c. 

Though heads are bald and heads are gray, 
And eyes and ears are giving way, 
The hearts are young as when life was new 
At the Class-day's tree in '52. 
A jolly old Class, &c. 

419 



Annals of the 

Though you are up and I am down, 
In spite of Fortune's smile or frown 
There are good times left for me and you, 
When we meet as boys of '52. 
A jolly old Class, &c. 

Thorndike led the singing of "Our Heroes." 
When Horace, 1 the colored headwaiter who for many years 
had looked after the comfort of the Class at its dinner, was 
called in to receive, in honor of the occasion, double the usual 
honorarium, the Secretary commended to his special care the 
last survivor of the Class, who a generation or more later, 
would be dining there alone, and prefaced his remarks with — 

'"T is sweet to dissipate in place" 

The flap-eared Horace said; 
Another Horace here tonight, 

He of the lanate head, 
Helps dissipation in this place; 

To him our thanks be paid. 

1902 

The Fiftieth anniversary, in 1902, brought out fourteen mem- 
bers of the Class, many of whom met for the last time; before 
the next anniversary two of those present had died. It was of 
course the last supper of any size, and with 1905 Denny's 
record ends. 

Those present in 1902 were Anderson, Addison Brown, Cary, 
Cheever, William G. Choate, Coolidge, Denny, Fisher, F. W. 
Hurd, Stedman, Thorndike, W. R. Ware, Washburn and 
Williamson. 

Few classes have found greater happiness in their re-unions 
than the Class of '52. 

"On the whole, it is strange how little men change," wrote 
Williamson to Denny after one of the meetings. "It is only 
on the surface. The lichen may obscure the face of the rock, 
but the rock is always there." 

1 Horace Hemsley entered the employ of Mr. George Young in i860, possibly 
when the house, afterwards known as Young's Hotel, was called Taft's Tavern. He 
died at the Massachusetts General Hospital 7 April, 1910. Although his active serv- 
ice ceased several years before his death, he was under full pay for a half century, 
respected alike by his employers and their guests. 

42O 



Harvard Class of i8j2 

To the end, the old tales retained their savor, the songs their 
charm. "William Barlow" was one of Richardson's favorites, 
Billy Bobby was addicted to "Longfellow," Williamson loved 
"Lauriger Horatius" and after the war Thorndike always sang 
"Our Heroes " in memory of their glorious dead. 

What though the mellow tones grew fainter with the passing 
years, — no voices could ever sound so sweet in the ears of the 
faithful classmates as those which first trolled the familiar 
strains in the old College Yard. 

Farewell! Farewell! ours is the longest wreath 

That ever circled round the old Class Tree. 
Xe'er have its leaves their shadows cast beneath 

On forms more frankly sad to part than we. 

Short be our partings, full our meetings be! 

Then, like old vintage be the scenes bygone, 

Bubbling from cobwebbed cells, but sparkling in the sun. 



The last entry in the Class Book is a pencilled note in Dr. 
Cheever's writing. "No minutes of meetings or dinners be- 
tween Commencement, 1903, and Denny's death, September, 
1907. In February-, 1908, a meeting was held to fill vacancies 
in offices held by him." 

The Class Secretaryship was never again officially filled, 
although Dr. Cheever ably performed the duties as long as he 
lived. After his death the Class Book was, of course, sent to 
the College Library, among whose archives it now reposes, and 
the voluminous notes and records connected with the Class, 
including letters from many of the members which had been 
preserved by Mr. Denny, were sent to Dr. Oliver. 

The collection was another instance of Mr. Denny's meticu- 
lous care in saving everything in any way relating to the Class. 
Dr. Oliver passed it over to the writer on her assuming her 
present task, and all records of any interest or value will be 
eventually sorted, mounted and placed in the Archives of the 
Massachusetts Historical Societv as a Memorial of the Class 
of '52. 

421 



Annals of the 



INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT SPARKS 

The Inauguration of President Sparks, which took place in 
February of the Freshman year, was of course the occasion of 
great festivity. A student crossing the College Yard in a 
"merry condition" in those days was no uncommon sight, Dr. 
White tells us, 1 and it is not, therefore, matter of surprise that 
the Inauguration was attended by a Bacchanalian revel. 
Many of the Seniors kept open house and open bottles all day 
long and far into the night, and the scenes in the College Yard 
were quite hilarious. That there were few attendants at Chapel 
the next morning it is safe to say, nor were aching heads per- 
haps confined to the students. No greater contrast than this 
could be given between the spirituous customs of those years 
and ours, and it is the more striking in that the members of 
the Class of 1852 were certainly not given to over-indulgence. 
The invitation and program for the occasion are subjoined: 

THE 

Corporation of Harbarb College 

Request the favor of your Company at the Inauguration of 
PRESIDENT SPARKS, 

on Wednesday, June 20, 1849. 

A Procession will be formed in GORE HALL at 3^ 
o'clk, P.M. and after the services in the Church, a COL- 
LATION will be given in HARVARD HALL, to which this 
ticket will admit the bearer. 

CAMBRIDGE, JUNE 11, 1849. 



1 Sketches of my Life by J. C. White, M.D. 
422 



Harvard Class of 1852 



INAUGURATION 



OF 



JAPED SPARKS, LL.D. 



AS 



PRESIDENT OF HARVARD COLLEGE, 



WEDNESDAY, JUNE 20, 1849. 



CAMBRIDGE: 
METCALF AND COMPANY, 

PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY. 

1849. 
423 



Annals of the 

ORDER OF PROCESSION FROM GORE HALL 



Undergraduates in the order of Classes. 
Resident Graduates and Members of the Scientific and 
Professional Schools. 
Music. 
Librarian with the College Seal and Charter. 
Steward with the College Keys. 
Members of the Corporation. 
Professors and all other Officers of Instruction and Gov- 
ernment of the College and the Professional Schools. 
Ex-President Quincy and Ex-President Everett. 
Ex-members of the Corporation. 
Ex-Professors and Instructers. 
Sheriffs of Suffolk and Middlesex. 
His Excellency the Governor and the President elect. 

Governor's Aids. 

His Honor the Lt. Governor and the Adjt. General. 

Secretary and Treasurer of the Commonwealth. 

The Honorable and Reverend Overseers. 

Trustees of the Charity of Edward Hopkins. 

Committee of the Boylston Medical Prizes. 

Committees of the Bowdoin Prize Dissertations. 

Committees of Examination appointed by the Overseers 

for the present year. 

Members of Congress and other guests specially invited. 

Presidents of other Colleges in New England. 

Judges of the State and United States Courts. 

Other Officers of those Courts. 

Mayor, Aldermen, Clerk, and Treasurer of the City of 

Cambridge. 

Alumni of the College. 

424 



Harvard Class of 1852 



ORDER OF EXERCISES IN THE CHURCH. 

I. VOLUNTARY ON THE ORGAN, 
BY MR. WEBB. 

II. GLORIA. 

III. PRAYER, 
BY THE REV. DR. WALKER. 

IV. ADDRESS AND INDUCTION INTO OFFICE, 
BY HIS EXCELLENCY GOVERNOR BRIGGS. 

V. REPLY, 

BY PRESIDENT SPARKS. 

VI. BENEDICTUS. 

VII. ORATION IN LATIN, 

BY CHARLES FRANCIS CHOATE, OF THE SENIOR CLASS. 

VIII. LATIN HYMN, 
BY FREDERICK ATHEARN LANE, OF THE SENIOR CLASS. 



425 



Annals of the 



i. ii. 

Quantos honores ferre nos Deditque lenitas tua 

Debemus, Deus, Hsec multa commoda, 

Salutis et vitse Dator, Quibus diu fructi sumus. 

Qui duxeris bene Ignosce crimina. 

Nostros patres in haec loca, Fac ut bonus nobis hodie 

Eos et anxia Adsit favor tuus. 

Cura diu defenderis, Augeto nos virtutibus 

Magno a periculo. O Praepotens Pater. 



Divina sit Prudentia 

Insignis ingeni, 
In omnibusque dirigat 

Hunc Prssidem novum. 
Annos salubres transigat, 

Possitque dicere 
Se prsestitisse munera 

Honeste ad ultimum. 



IX. INAUGURAL ADDRESS, 
BY PRESIDENT SPARKS. 

X. PRAYER, 
BY THE REV. DR. FRANCIS. 

XI. DOXOLOGY. 

"Old Hundred." 

i. ii. 

From all that dwell below the skies, Eternal are thy mercies, Lord; 
Let the Creator's praise arise; Eternal truth attends thy word: 

Let the Redeemer's name be sung Thy praise shall sound from shore to 

Through every land, by every tongue. shore 

Till suns shall rise and set no more. 

XII. BENEDICTION. 

At the conclusion of the exercises, the Alumni and invited guests, gentlemen 
and ladies, will assemble at Gore Hall, and, after a recess of twenty minutes, will 
proceed to Harvard Hall, to partake of a collation. No person will be admitted 
to Harvard Hall without a card. 

The vocal music will be performed, under the direction of Mr. Webb, by a 
choir composed of Undergraduates and Alumni. 

426 



Harvard Class of 1852 
A SCINTILLA} 



THE TASK. 

"Twelve well crammed lines, firm, juicy, marrowy, sweet, 
No bone or trimmings, nothing there but meat, 
With rhyme run through them like a golden skewer, 
Taste might approve and patience may endure." 



THE EXECUTION. 
Long live Old Harvard ! Lo, her rushing train 
Greets a new sign-board stretched across the plain; 
While the bell rings — ■ (and that the bell shall do 
Till Charles shall drop his worn-out channel through) 
It gently hints to every cur that barks, 
Here comes the engine, — don't you see the Sparks! 

How changed this scene! The forest path is clear; 
That mighty engine finds no Indian here ! 
The world's great Teachers quit their native Alps 
To fill the skulls once trembling for their scalps, 
When the red neighbours of our ancient School 
Left their own wigwam others' wigs to cool! 

* This poem was found among the papers of the Secretary of the Class of 1852; it 
evidently was written at the time of President Sparks' Inauguration. The name of 
the author is unknown. The stanzas are well printed on a half-sheet of linen pap er, 
8 by 6\ inches. 



427 



Annals of the 

CLASS FUND 

A Fund of Three hundred dollars was contributed by the Class 
for the expenses of Class Day with an additional Fifty dollars 
for the Class Cradle, Twenty dollars for the Jack-knife and 
Twenty-five dollars for the Class Book, respectively. 

The Fund was subsequently augmented from time to time, 
the necessary money often being advanced in the interim by 
the faithful Denny. 

A sum was raised in 1892, as already mentioned, to defray 
the traveling expenses of members at a distance who could not 
otherwise have attended the Fortieth Anniversary. 

MEMORIAL HALL 

The Class contributed to the subscription for the building 
of Memorial Hall. 

ENDOWMENTS 

The George B. Sohier Prize of $250 "for the best thesis 
presented by a successful candidate for Honors in English or 
in Modern Literature" was founded by Waldo Higginson 
(H. C. 1833) in memory of his brother-in-law George Brimmer 
Sohier. 

The Addison Brown Prize. A bequest of $2,500 was re- 
ceived from Addison Brown, the net income to be awarded 
annually or biennially for the best essay by a student in the 
Law School on the subject of Maritime or Private Interna- 
tional Law. 

The Addison Brown Scholarship, with an income of 
$325, founded by Addison Brown, to be awarded to "a needy, 
meritorious undergraduate student." 

The Ruluff Sterling Choate Scholarship, with an in- 
come of $275, founded by Joseph Hodges Choate, in 1884, in 
memory of his son who died while in College. 

The Dana Scholarship of the Class of 1852, with an 
income of $250, founded by Mrs. Anne Finney Schaeffer in 
memory of her son Charles Francis Dana. 

The Gorham Thomas Scholarship, with an income of 
$250, founded, in 1865, by Dr. Alexander Thomas in memory 
of his son Gorham Thomas, to be awarded to a student in the 
Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. 

428 



Harvard Class of 1852 

The David Williams Cheever Scholarship, with an in- 
come of $275, founded, in 1889, by David Williams Cheever, 
to be awarded to a poor and meritorious student after three 
months' probation in the Medical School. 

Under the will of Mrs. William Cross Williamson a Scholar- 
ship is to be founded, at the termination of two lives, in mem- 
ory of her husband, William Cross Williamson. 

The Choate Memorial Fellowship. In 1919, Members 
of the Harvard Club of New York City gave to the College 
$40,000 to establish the Choate Memorial Fellowship. The 
letter of gift provides that: 

The income in each year is to be paid to a British subject who 
may come from the University of Cambridge, England, to study in 
any department of Harvard University, upon the appointment and 
recommendation of the then Vice Chancellor of the University of 
Cambridge, or of such other officer of said University as may be duly 
authorized. The same person may enjoy the Fellowship for not 
more than three years in succession, provided he receives a separate 
appointment for each year. 

The letter also recites that: 

In establishing this Fellowship in memory of a distinguished 
graduate who was twice President of the Harvard Club of New York 
City and President Emeritus at the time of his death, and formerly 
Ambassador of the United States to Great Britain, the members of 
the Harvard Club of New York City hope that the bonds will be 
drawn closer between the University at which John Harvard studied 
and the University which he helped to found; and they have further 
in mind that the precedent of this Fellowship will be followed by the 
establishment of other similar Fellowships at Harvard and at other 
Universities and Colleges of the United States and of Great Britain, 
and that such action will surely tend to strengthen and increase per- 
manent relations of friendship between the two great nations. 

The Sturgis-Hooper Professorship of Geology. In 
1865 Samuel Hooper, the father of William Sturgis Hooper, 
"placed fifty thousand dollars in the hands of trustees, to es- 
tablish a School of Mines in connection with the Lawrence 
Scientific School, and for the foundation of a professorship 
to be called the Sturgis Hooper Professorship." In 1874 it 
"was constituted by the founder a separate chair." On the 
first of July, 1921, the fund amounted to $108,476.69. 

429 



Annals of the 

The Gurney Professorship of History and Political 
Science. Ellen Gurney, the widow of Professor Ephraim 
Gurney, died in 1888, leaving to the College the sum of 
$158,544 to found a Professorship of History. This fund was 
allowed to accumulate to about $200,000. From this bequest 
the Corporation established the Professorship in 1908. 

The Gurney Professorship of English Literature 
was established by the Corporation in 1916 from the income 
of Mrs. Gurney's bequest. 

The Henry Kemble Oliver Professorship of Hygiene. 
At various times between January, 1899, and May, 1913, Dr. 
Henry Kemble Oliver gave to the Corporation money and 
securities for the establishment of a fund the income of which 
is to be used for "the liberal maintenance in the undergrad- 
uate department of said College of a full professorship of 
hygiene." Dr. Oliver's gifts were made with the understand- 
ing that his name should in nowise appear in connection 
therewith during his lifetime. Known in 1914 as the Profes- 
sorship of Hygiene, it was established by the Corporation 
under its present title in 1920. On the first of July, 1921, 
the fund amounted, with accumulations, to $399,956.53. Dr. 
Roger Irving Lee is the first incumbent of this chair. 

TRANSMITTENDUM 

Near the end of the year eighteen hundred and forty-eight, 
the undersigned, being then a poor boy and a Freshman in 
Harvard College, received the sum of Thirty Dollars, with 
the request that he would expend it in the purchase of an 
overcoat. It came from the Honorable Edward Everett, then 
President of the college, who, having observed at morning 
prayers an obscure Freshman from the country coming in 
without an overcoat, at a time when most of the students had 
begun to wear them, suspected the reason and made this kind 
and thoughtful and generous provision for a remedy. 

No conditions or suggestions, other than the one above 
mentioned, were connected with the gift. But it has seemed 
to the undersigned, being now for the first time able to gratify 
his wishes in this respect, that he could not in any better way 
express his gratitude for a gift bestowed upon him with such 
thoughtful kindness, than by transmitting the same sum of 

430 



Harvard Class of 1852 

money, and providing for its perpetual transmission among 
persons in a similar situation to his own at the time when he 
received it, to be used for the same purpose for which it was 
given to him. 

He wishes, therefore, that this parchment, together with 
the sum of thirty dollars (accompanying it) which is to be 
expended in the purchase of an overcoat, may be forever 
transmitted in succession to some undergraduate at Harvard 
College to whom such assistance would be of especial service. 
And the successive holders thereof are requested to write upon 
the parchment their name, the date when they received and 
delivered it and the place of their residence before entering 
college. They are also requested to transmit the parchment 
and the money as soon as their circumstances will comfortably 
permit, and not sooner. And they are especially requested 
to provide, by will or otherwise, against any possible failure 
in the transmission by them or their representatives. 

And now the undersigned, gratefully recalling the kindness 
which first placed this money in his hands, delivers it to his 
successor, wishing for him and all who follow him the enjoy- 
ment of a thick and comfortable garment; — therewith also 
desiring for them the inward warmth of an innocent and vir- 
tuous life. 

Boston, December 17, 1863. James Bradley Thayer. 

Flavius J. Macmillan, the donee first below written, is re- 
quested, by his kind friend, Mr. Thayer, the donor, who first 
conceived the transmission of this happy little benevolence, 
to ask his successors to confine the said fund, to students of 
noble natures and small means, who are Undergraduates in 
Harvard College. 

Flavius J. Macmillan 1 
Boston, Dec. 17th, 1863. 

Alfred Gradolph 2 

Toledo, Ohio, November 17, 1909. 

John Cohen 3 

Cambridge, Mass., January 14, 1916. 

1 Flavius Josephus Macmillan, /. 1864; died 1904. 

2 Alfred Peter Gradolph, s. 1913, m.c.l. (Engin. Sci.), M.M.E. 1915. 

3 John Cohen, A.B. 1917. 

431 



Annals of the Harvard Class of 1832 



DESCRIPTION OF THE FRONTISPIECE 

The following description of the picture of the College Yard 
made in 1849 (the upper illustration in the Frontispiece) is 
from a letter of Addison Brown to his father: 

The building at the extreme left is the new library building built 
of stone and in Gothic style, as you perceive. This is the only one 
which can be called handsome or particularly interesting. The build- 
ing next to the right, called University Hall, contains the Chapel, 
recitation rooms etc., the ground story of which is occupied by the 
Commons Department. 'Tis built of a sort of white granite, I 
should think, and from its whiteness appears very neat and pretty. 
The low building next this appears small by its distance, although 
it is smaller than the others, and is the Law School building. The 
two next this are the oldest of all, Massachusetts and Harvard, the 
latter having a small belfry. Then follow three others, with a small 
old office building, seen through the vacancy left between the first 
two (of the three), and finally, upon the extreme right, the build- 
ings of the Lawrence Scientific School. A street runs between this 
and the other buildings. The foliage of the trees is represented too 
high and the whole less shady in reality. 



432 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Names of members of the Class of 1852 are printed in small capitals 
Dates within parentheses indicate Harvard Classes 



Ai 



lBBOT, Francis Ellingwood (1859), 
229 

Adams, Judge , quoted, on W. G. 

Choate, 59 

John Quincy (1787), President, 131 

Adventists, 350 re 

Agassiz, Louis, 27, 27 n, 191, 229; anec- 
dotes of, 322, 323 

Alabama Claims, 20, 21 

Albee, Obadiah Wheelock, 6 

Alexandra, wife of King Edward VII, 
J. H. Choate's reply to, 50 

Alger, Horatio (1825), 5. 

■ Horatio, son of Horatio (1825), 

54, 121, 193, 332; sketch of, 5-11; his 
class ode, 274, 306; membership of, in 
college societies, 367, 385, 395; song 
by, 395-396; ode for fortieth anni- 
versary, 418 

Olive Augusta (Fenno), wife of 

Horatio (1825), 5 

Allmand, Hanson, 195 

Alpha Delta Phi, and class of 1852, 321, 

American Bar Association, F. W. Hurd 
an organizer of, ill 

Ames, Fisher (1774), J. B. Thayer writes 
sketch of, 180 

John Worthington (1892), 182 

Mary (Lesley), 229 

Sarah Bradford (Thayer), wife of 

John Worthington, 182 

Ammidown, Edward Holmes (1853), 384 

Anderson, Augusta (Chauncey), wife of 
Elbert Ellery, 12 

Elbert, 11 

Elbert Ellery, son of Henry 

James, 60, 102, 208, 371; sketch of, 
11-15; membership of, in college so- 
cieties, 369 

Fanny (Da Ponte), wife of Henry 

James, 11 

Henry James, son of Elbert, 1 1 

Henry James, son of Elbert Ellery, 

IS 
Peter Chauncey, son of Elbert 



Ellery, 15; contributes to publication 
of this volume, xv 

Andrew, Gov. John Albion, 115 

Andrews, Gen. George Leonard, 147 

Anthon, Charles, 11 

Arbitration, first Board of, in New Eng- 
land, 127 n 

Arnold, Caroline Marie (Welch) Crownin- 
shield, wife of Howard Payson, 16 

Howard Payson, son of Samuel 

Stillman, 62, 272; sketch of, 15-17 

Samuel Stillman, 15 

Sarah Louisa (Payson), wife of 

Samuel Stillman, 15 

Astor Place Riot, 123, 123 re 

Athenee Royal, Antwerp, 72 

Atwater, Caleb, 60 

■ Elizabeth Lydia (Clarke), wife of 

Caleb, 60 

Atwood, Luther (1883), acknowledg- 
ment to, vii 

Aubin, Joshua, 193 

Mary Bussey (Newell), wife of 

Joshua, 193 

Austin, Abner, 245 

Elizabeth (Wicks), wife of Abner, 

245 1 „ 

Avon Home, for needy children, founded 

by J. Huntington, 109, no 



B, 



>AIRD, Brig.-Gen. Absalom, 36 

Baker, Nathaniel Bradley (1839), Gov- 
ernor of New Hampshire, 348 

Balch, Anna (Jay), wife of Rev. Lewis 
Penn Witherspoon, 136 

Rev. Lewis Penn Witherspoon, 136 

Banks, Francis S., 12 

Gen. Nathaniel Prentice, 12, 105, 

147; quoted, on W. S. Hooper, 105 

Baptist, John, 71 

Bar Association of the City of New York, 
E. E. Anderson one of the founders of, 
12; also W. G. Choate, 60 

Barlow, Samuel Latham Mitchell, 59 

Barns, William H. L., 49 



435 



Index 



Barrett, Dr. Dustin, 30 
Bartlett, Sidney (1818), 185 

Thomas, 80 

Batchelder, Jacob, 239 

Beale, Helen M., acknowledgment to, viii 

Beck, Charles, 27, 27 n, 290, 334, 354, 

354 «. 35S, 3SS «. 365, 39°, 39i, 39i « 
Bellows, Abel Herbert (1842), 348 

Rev. Henry Whitney (1832), 50 

Benoit, Mamie Esther (Fisher), wife of 

Maurice Victor, 86 
— ■ — Maurice Victor, 86 
Bent, Samuel Arthur, quoted, on S. M. 

Quincy, 148 
Bent & Bush, hatters, 333 n 
Bernard, Ellen (Engle), wife of William 

H., 208 

William H., 208 

Bigelow, Dr. Henry Jacob (1837), 133 n 

Bissell, Rev. Samuel, 162 

Bite Tavern, Boston, 382, 382 n 

Black Bill, coachman in Waring family, 

207 n 
Blake, Elizabeth Stone (Gray), wife of 

Dr. John Ellis, 17 

Helen (Ellis), wife of John Rice, 17 

Henrv Sargent, son of Dr. John 

Ellis, 18 
Dr. John Ellis, son of John Rice, 

128; sketch of, 17-18; membership of, 

in college societies, 368, 400 

John Rice, 17 

John Rice, son of Dr. John Ellis, 18 

Louise Dumeresq, daughter of Dr. 

John Ellis, 18 
Bliss, Jeremiah Evans, 175 

Laura, wife of Jeremiah Evans, 175 

Blunt, James F., 213 

Bogardus, E. R., 30 

Bolmar, A., 81 

Bonney, Alice Lucretia, daughter of 

Charles Thomas, 21 
■ Catharine (Thomas), wife of Charles 

19 

Charles, 19 

■ Charles Thomas, son of Charles, 

sketch of, 18-22; membership of, in 

college societies, 367, 395 
Charles Thomas, Jr., son of Charles 

Thomas, 21 

George, brother of Charles, 19 

George Edward, son of Charles 

Thomas, 21 
Helen Louise, daughter of Charles 

Thomas, 21 
John Cotton Gibbs, son of Charles 

Thomas, 21 
Katherine Thomas, daughter of 

Charles Thomas, 21 
■ Mary Gibbs, daughter of Charles 

Thomas, 21 



Bonney, Mary Lucretia (Gibbs), wife of 

Charles Thomas, 21 
Boston Antiquarian Club, S. M. Quincy's 

work for, 149 
Boston Catholic Choral Society, 68 
Boston City Hospital, amphitheatre in, 

dedicated to Dr. D. W. Cheever, 46 n 
Boston Common, S. M. Quincy quoted 

on, 149 
Boston Library Society, 77, 78 
Boston School for the Ministry, 38, 38 n 
Bostonian Society, founding of, 149 
Bowditch, Dr. Henry Ingersoll (1828), 

129 
Bowdoin prizes, 260 
Boylston prizes, 260 
Bradford, Rev. George (1851), 384 
Bradlaugh, Charles, 197 
Brad lee, Rev. Caleb Davis, son of 

Samuel, 38, 38 n, 113, 140, 177; sketch 

of, 22-25; his tribute to A. W. Thaxter, 

177; quoted, on S. Willard, 218 
Caroline (Gay), wife of Caleb 

Davis, 23 
Elizabeth (Davis), wife of Samuel, 

22 
Elizabeth Williams, daughter of 

Caleb Davis. See Smith 
Nancy Gay, daughter of Caleb 

Davis, 23 

Samuel, 22 

Bragg, Gen. Braxton, 163 

Brattle House, Cambridge, 327 

Briggs, Gov. George Nixon, gives address 

at inauguration of President Sparks, 

4 2 5 

Brigham, Clarence Saunders, acknowl- 
edgment to, vii 

William (1829), 115 

Britton, Dr. Nathaniel Lord, 31, 31 n, 33 

Brookline Public Library, 103 

Brooks, Abner, schoolmaster, 56, 56 n 

Eleanor, daughter of Peter Chardon. 

See Saltonstall 

Ellen (Shepherd), wife of Gorham, 

26 

Gorham (18 14), 26 

Lawrence (1891), son of Peter 

Chardon, 28 

Peter Chardon, son of Gorham, 

contributes to publication of this 
volume, xv; sketch of, 25-28; member- 
ship of, in college societies, 368, 385, 
400 

Right Rev. Phillips (1855), J. H. 

Choate's tribute to, 53 

— ■ — Sarah (Lawrence), wife of Peter 
Chardon, 27 

William Hathorne (1827), 119, 141, 

144, 161 

Brooks & Ball, lawyers, 15, 65 



43 6 



Index 



Brown, , 27, 27 n 

■ Addison, 29 

Judge Addison, son of Addison, 

39, 59, 60, 94, 102, 326 n, 335; sketch of 
2 9 _ 33! quoted, on J. Porter, 140; on 
C. Wright, 228; on President Sparks, 
321; on Professor Agassiz and Pro- 
fessor Peirce, 322; on Longfellow, 324; 
on observance of Sunday at Harvard, 
331; college organist, 332; membership 
of, in college societies, 385, 395, 398; 
founds prize and scholarship, 428; 
describes picture of the College Yard, 
432 

■ Addison, Jr., son of Judge Addison, 

32 

Albert, 33 

Alexander, & Sons, bankers, 188 

Catharine Babson (Griffin), wife of 

Addison, 29 

Conway Rathbone, son of Henry 

William, 34 

Edward Ogden, 107 n; quoted, on 

F. S. Howe, 107 

Edward Osgood, acknowledgment 

to, viii 

Elinor Maria, daughter of Judge 

Addison, 32 

George, G., 188 

■ Harriet (Rathbone), wife of Henry 

William, 34 

■ Helen Carpenter (Gaskin), second 

wife of Judge Addison, vii, 32; con- 
tributes to publication of this volume, 
xv 

Rev. Hejiry William, son of Al- 
bert, 365; sketch of, 33-35; member- 
ship of, in college societies, 349, 367, 

384. 385, 39S . . 

John, Abolitionist, 74 

Joseph Mansfield (1853), 347 

Mary Blair (Eaton), wife of Albert, 

33 

Mary C. (Barrett), first wife of 

Judge Addison, 30; death of, 32 

Ralph Gascoigne (1918), son of 

Judge Addison, 32 

Stanley Noel, son of Judge Addison, 

32 

Brown, Hall & Vanderpool, lawyers, 30 

Bryan, William Jennings, 13 

Buckler, Dr. Riggin (1851), 128 

Bullen, , 29 

Burley Farm, Danvers, 135, 136 

Burns, Anthony, 144 

Burr, Alice Ellerton (Pratt), wife of 
Heman Merrick, 143; contributes to 
publication of this volume, xv 

■ Heman Merrick (1877), 143; con- 
tributes to publication of this volume, 
xv 



Burton, Rev. L., 195 

Robert, quoted on cookery, 77 

Butler, Gen. Benjamin Franklin, 236 
Butler, Evarts & Southmayd, 49 
Buttrick, Edward King, son of Eph- 

raim, 69; sketch of, 36-37; membership 

of, in college societies, 367 
Edward Sawyer, son of Edward 

King, 36 

Ephraim (18 19), 36 

Frank, son of Ephraim, 36 

Lawrence Snelling, son of Edward 

King, 36 
Mary, daughter of Edward King, 

36 

Mary (King), wife of Ephraim, 36 

Mary (Sawyer), wife of Edward 

King, 36 



c 



_^ >ABOT, Edward Clarke, 205 
California Irrigation case, 50 
Cambridge, in 1848, 326-328 

Shepard Memorial Church, 101 n 

Cameron, Alexander James, 68 

Catherine Tucker, wife of Alexander 

James, 68 
Campbell, Ellen Moore (Fowle), wife of 

William, 236 

William, 236 

Canadian Railroad, extended to Boston, 

4°S 
Canfield, Alice Louisa, daughter of Rev. 

Charles Taylor, 39 
Charles Hayward, son of Rev. 

Charles Taylor, 39 
Rev. Charles Taylor, son of 

Milton Bassett (or Beach), sketch of, 

37-39 
■ Charles Taylor, son of Rev. Charles 

Taylor, 39 
Grace Rebecca, daughter of Rev. 

Charles Taylor, 39 
Hannah (Clifford), wife of Milton 

Bassett (or Beach), 37 
■ Louisa Bellows (Hayward), wife of 

Rev. Charles Taylor, 38 
Mary Gardner, daughter of Rev. 

Charles Taylor, 39 

Milton Bassett (or Beach), 37, 37 n 

Cannon. See Kiernan 

Carleton, James H., 107 n 

Mary Cooke (Howe), wife of 

James H., 107 n; quoted, on F. S. 

Howe, 107 
Carlton, Oliver, schoolmaster, 47, 57, 189, 

189 n 
Cary, George Lovell, son of William 

Hiram, 30,; sketch of, 39-41; member- 
ship of, in college societies, 367, 385, 

395, 399 



437 



Index 



Cary, Lydia Daniells (Lovell), wife of 

William Hiram, 39 
Margaret Lovell, daughter of 

George Lovell. See Pratt 
Mary Isabella (Harding), wife of 

George Lovell, 40, 41 

William Hiram, 39 

Casali. See Secchi de Casali 

Catholic Union, Boston, 68 

Catlin, Julius, 348 

Cesnola case, 50 

Chandler, Peleg Whitman, 144, 180, 197 

Channing, Edward Tyrrel, 26, 26 n, 290, 

301 n, 389, 389 n, 390; as a teacher, 324 

Chase, Mrs. , of Chatham, N.Y., 207 

Joseph Stanwood, son of Reginald 

Heber, 42, 43 
: Levin Joynes, son of Reginald 

Heber, 41 n, 43; quoted, on his father, 

42, 42 n 

Rev. Moses Bailey, 41 

Philander, son of Reginald Heber, 

43 

Reginald Heber, son of Rev. 

Moses Bailey, 19; sketch of, 41-43; 
membership of, in college societies, 

38S, 395 

■ Sarah Curtis (Joynes), wife of Rev. 

Moses Bailey, 41 

Susan Ladd (Stanwood), wife of 

Reginald Heber, 42 

Thomas (1848), 42, 334 

Chauncey, Rev. Peter Schermerhorn, 12 

Chauncy, Rev. Charles, President of 
Harvard College, 359, 359 n 

Cheever, Dr. Abijah (1779), 43, 44 

Adeline, daughter of Dr. David 

Williams. See Whiteside 

Adeline (Haven), wife of Dr. Charles 

Augustus, 43 

Alice, daughter of Dr. David Wil- 
liams, 46 

Anna Caroline (Nichols), wife of 

Dr. David Williams, 43 

Dr. Charles Augustus (1813), son 

of Dr. Abijah, 43 

David, son Dr. David Williams, of 

46 

Dr. David (1897), son of Dr. David 

Williams, contributes to publication of 
this volume, xv; service of, in France, 
46 

Dr. David Williams, son of Dr. 

Charles Augustus, 3, 28, 121, 421; 
quoted, on C. T. Canfield, 39; sketch of, 
43-46; memorial to, 46 n; quoted, on 
C. Wright, 228; membership of, in col- 
lege societies, 367, 395; founds scholar- 
ship, 429 

Ezekiel, schoolmaster, 43, 43 n 

Ezekiel, son of Dr. David, 46 



Cheever, Helen, daughter of Dr. David 
Williams, 46 

Marion, daughter of Dr. David 

Williams, 46 

Cheney, Mrs. O. A., 11 

Chi Pi Fraternity, effort to found Har- 
vard Chapter of, 346 

Child, Francis James (1846), 158, 158 n, 
332, 387, 387 n 

Choat, Benjamin (1703), 55, 55 n 

Choate, Caroline Dutcher (Sterling), 
wife of Joseph Hodges, 49, 51; con- 
tributes to publication of this volume, 
xv 

Charles Francis (1849), gives Latin 

oration at inauguration of Pres. Sparks, 
425 

Dr. George (1818), 47, 54 

George, son of Joseph Hodges, 52 

John, founder of New England 

Choate family, 54 

Joseph Hodges, son of Dr. George, 

55, 58, 64, 65, 69, 70, 86, 90, 98, 121, 
122, 124, 125, 160, 190, 197, 205, 207, 
221, 222, 329 n, 335, 338; acknowledg- 
ment to, vii; sketch of, 46-54; quoted, on 
E. H. Neal, 1 19-120; reads class poem 
by W. C. Williamson, 306; undeserved 
honors from R. S. Rantoul, 335 n; his 
. opinion of class of 1852, 337; member- 
ship of, in college societies, 346, 368, 
384, 385, 395; founds Ruluff Sterling 
Choate Scholarship, 428; Choate Me- 
morial Fellowship founded in memory 
of, 429 

Joseph Hodges (1897), son of Jo- 
seph Hodges (1852), 52 

■ Josephine Sterling, daughter of 

Joseph Hodges, 52 

Mabel, daughter of Joseph Hodges, 

52; contributes to publication of this 
volume, xv 

Margaret Manning (Hodges), wife 

of Dr. George, 47, 54, 56 

Mary Lyman (Atwater), wife of 

Judge William Gardner, 60 

Rufus, 48, 52, 141 

Ruluff Sterling (1887), son of Jo- 
seph Hodges, 52; scholarship founded 
in memory of, 428 

Judge William Gardner, son of 

Dr. George, 26, 30, 32, 47, 197, 272, 
335> 336; acknowledgment to, vii; 
contributes to publication of this vol- 
ume, xv; quoted, on E. E. Anderson, 
13; sketch of, 54-61; quoted, on L. 
Agassiz, 323; on E. T. Channing, 324; 
membership of, in college societies, 346, 
368, 385, 395 

Choate, La Rocque & Mitchell, lawyers, 59 

Choate Memorial Fellowship, 429 



438 



Index 



Choate School, Wallingford, Ct., 60 
Chute, Dr. Arthur Lambert, 176 

Eliza Robinson (Swift), wife of Dr. 

Arthur Lambert, 175, 176 
Civil War soldiers of class of 1852, 337, 

345 

Clark, G. F., gives anecdote of R. Ware 
and an autograph quilt, 203-204 

Dr. Henry Grafton, 214, 214 n 

Right Rev. Thomas Marsh, Bishop 

of Rhode Island, 117 

Clark & Shaw, lawyers, 141 

Class anniversaries, list of, 406-407; 
especial anniversaries, 407-421 

Class Baby, 109, 410 

Class Book of 1852, anecdote concerning, 
133; appropriation for, 271, 428; H. G. 
Denny's work on, 421, 

Class Cradle, awards of, 90, 109; appro- 
priation for, 271, 428 

Class Day, 1852: officers, 271; exercises, 
271-275; oration, 276-294; poem, 295- 
305; account of, 305-307; expenses, 
307, 428 

Class Dining Club. See Dining Club, '52. 

Class Fund, 428 

Class Jack-knife, 58 n, 227, 227 n, 271, 
272, 272 w, 428 

Class of 1852: list of members, 1-2; 
members in attendance during the 
several years, 252-259; members re- 
ceiving degree, 313-314; life and cus- 
toms of, 1848-1852, 328-338; dates of 
birth, 339-340; members in the various 
professions, 341; changed names, 342; 
sons of Harvard fathers, 342, 344; 
fathers of Harvard sons, 343, 344; 
Civil War soldiers, 345 

Class pictures, beginning of the custom, 
190, 272 

Class records, eventual disposition of, 
421 

Class supper at graduation, 407-409 

Cleaveland, Titus & Chapman, lawyers, 

121, 122 

Clergymen, members who became, 341 
Cleveland, Grover, President, 13, 15 
Clifford, Charles Warren (1865), quoted, 

on C. T. Bonney, 20-21 
Cohen, John (1917), 431, 431 n 
Colby, Charles G., 238 
Cole, Rev. Cyrus, 117 
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, C. Wright 

compared to, 228 
College Societies, 346-401 
College Yard, A. Brown's description of 

the picture in frontispiece, 432 
Collins, Alethea, daughter of Josiah 

(1852), 62 
Cadwallader, son of Josiah (1852), 

62 



Collins, Elizabeth Jones, daughter of 

Josiah (1852), 62 

Josiah, 6i 

-Josiah, son of Josiah, 47, 101; 

sketch of, 61-62; membership of, in 

college societies, 367, 385, 395, 399 

Josiah J., son of Josiah (1852), 62 

Mary Riggs, daughter of Josiah 

(1852), 62 

Mary (Riggs), wife of Josiah, 61 

Rebecca, daughter of Josiah (1852), 

62 
Sarah Rebecca (Jones), wife of 

Josiah (1852), 62 
Colonial Society of Massachusetts, The, 

57 n, 112, 182, 183, 186, 196 n, 197 n, 

199 n, 200 n, 224, 225, 225 n 
Colored troops in the Civil War, S. M. 

Quincy's interest in, 147-149 
Commencement, 1852, 309-318 
Commons, discontinuance of, 288; char- 
acter of, 1848, 329, 329 n 
Cone, Rev. Orello, 40 
Contributors to publication of this 

volume, xv 
Cooke, Alfred Wellington, son of 

Josiah Wellington, 410; sketch of, 62- 

63; membership of, in college societies, 

395 

Josiah Parsons (1848), 27, 27 n, 

130, 334 

Josiah Wellington, 62 

Sarah (Hancock), wife of Josiah 

Wellington, 62 

Coolidge, Alice, daughter of Horace 
Hopkins, 67 

Amos, 64 

Charles Cummings, son of Horace 

Hopkins, 67 

Eunice Maria (Weeks), wife of 

Horace Hopkins, 66 

Horace Hopkins, son of Amos, 

43, 62, 67, 69, 72, 122, 127, 190, 198, 
208, 335, 372 n; sketch of, 64-67; his 
ode for Class Supper, 1850, 333-334; 
membership of, in college societies, 346, 
349, 367, 368, 384, 385, 392, 393, 395, 
401; poem by, 356-364 

Louisa (Hopkins), wife of Amos, 64 

Louise, daughter of Horace Hop- 
kins. See Hurd 

Thomas Jefferson (1850), 185 

William Williamson (1879), son of 

Horace Hopkins, 67 

Cooper, Judge David, 240 

Edward, 13 

Corcoran, William Wilson, 191 

Corse, Maj.-Gen. John Murray, 247 

Cotton, Rev. John, of Boston, 127 n 

Crapo, William Wallace, 19 

Creswell, Adj.-Gen. John Angel James, 20 



439 



Index 



Crowley, Agnes Cameron, daughter of 

John Colman, 69 

Daniel, 67 

Daniel Cameron, son of John 

Colman, 69 
John Colman, son of Daniel, 324, 

330; sketch of, 67-70; membership of, 

in college societies, 367 
Alary Catherine, daughter of John 

Colman, 69, 324 

Mary Colman, wife of Daniel, 67 

Mary Jane (Cameron), wife of 

John Colman, 68, 69 
Crowninshield, Caroline Marie (Welch), 

wife of Edward Augustus, 16 

Edward Augustus (1836), 16 

Cudworth, Rev. Warren Handel (1850), 

2 3 

Cunningham, William Henry (1853), 347 

Curd, Charles P., 237 

■ Mrs. Charles P., 237 

Curtis, Annie Wroe (Scollay), wife of 
Charles Pelham, 70 

Charles Pelham (1811), 70 

Lily (Baptist), wife of Thomas 

James, 71 

— ■ — Thomas Buckminster, 70 

Thomas James, son of Charles 

Pelham, 355, 355 n, 363, 363 n; sketch 
of, 70-71; membership of, in college 
societies, 346, 349, 367, 368, 385; in 
first Harvard-Yale regatta, 347 

Cushing, Edmund Lambert (1827), 216 

Thomas (1834), 74 



D 



'ALLIN, Cyrus Edwin, 28 

Dalton, Rev. Asa (1848), 117 

Ormond Horace, 346 

Dana, Anne Finney (Holton), wife of 
Francis Washington. See Schaeffer. 

Charles Francis, son of Francis 

Washington, 16, 64, 128, 150, 327, 335, 
346; sketch of, 71-73; membership of, 
in college societies, 367, 368, 385, 394, 
401; scholarship founded in memory of, 
428 

Edith (Stedman), wife of Gorham, 

172 

Francis Washington, 71 

Gorham, 172 

Da Ponte, Lorenzo, 11 

Darwin, Charles, entertains C. Wright, 
229 

Daves, John (1853), 384 

Davis, Dr. Charles Augustine, 214, 214 n 

Jefferson, order of, concerning pris- 
oners, 144 

William, quoted, on J. B. Kimball, 

"4 

Dayton, William Lewis, 114 



Dead, use of the word in college slang, 
356, 356 n, 388 

Demond, Rev. Elijah, 103 

Denny, Daniel, 73 

Harriet Joanna (Gardner), wife of 

Daniel, 73 

Henry Gardner, son of Daniel, 

3, 6, 11, 14, 28, 36, 62, 69, 71, 86, 90, 91, 
94, 98, 102, no, 113, 137, 138, 163, 
163 n, 177, 183, 187, 195, 196, 216, 419, 
421, 428; sketch of, 73-78, 311, 338, 
410; membership of, in college soci- 
eties, 394, 395, 401 

Depew, Chauncey Mitchell, 48 

De Quincy, Thomas, C. Wright com- 
pared to, 228 

Derby, Elias Hasket (1824), 222 

George Strong (/ 1861), 222, 223 

Deturs, 260-268, 333 

Dickey, David W., 199 

■ Eliza, wife of David W., 199 

Dillman, George Lincoln, 195 

Mary Diana Allmand (Wallace), 

wife of George Lincoln, 195 

Dining Club, '32: 77, 78, 112, 171, 182, 
224, 248; establishment of, 401 

Dislocation of thigh, unusual case of, 131 

Dixwell, Epes Sargent (1827), 167 

Dorsheimer, Samuel, 192 

Doster, Ruth (Porter), wife of William 
E., 141 

William E., 141 

Downes, Henry Hill, son of Commo- 
dore John, sketch of, 78-79; member- 
ship of, in college societies, 401 

Commodore John, 78 

Maria Gertrude (Hoffman), wife of 

Commodore John, 78 

Draft riots feared, 413 

Drasche, Henri, 129 

Dudley, N. A. M., 348 

Gov. Thomas, 33 

Duff, Margaret Gray (Head), wife of 
Lieut. Robert John, 97 

Lieut. Robert John, 97 

Dunbar, Charles Franklin (1851), 138 

Dunn, Dr. Samuel, 245 

Dunster, Henry, President of Harvard 
College, 359, 359 n 

Dunton, Sidney, 108 

Dwight, Ann (Bartlett), wife of Jona- 
than, 80 

Arthur, son of Jonathan (1852), 81 

Jonathan, 80 

Jonathan, son of Jonathan, 121; 

sketch of, 80-81; in first Harvard-Yale 
regatta, 347 

Jonathan (1880), son of Jonathan 

(1852)81 

Julia Lawrence (Hasbrouck), wife 

of Jonathan (1852), 80 



44O 



Index 



Dwight, Timothy, President of Yale Col- 
lege, 80 
■ Wilder (1853), 146, 190, 190M, 205 



-L^ATON, George (1833), 70, 92 

Nathaniel, 359, 359 n 

Eddy, John, 19 

Edes, Grace (Williamson), wife of Henry 
Herbert, 225; contributes to publica- 
tion of this volume, xv 

Henry Herbert (h 1906), 225; ac- 
knowledgment to, viii; contributes to 
publication of this volume, xv 

Edgell, Rev. John Quincy Adams, 29 

Edward VII, King of England, 51 

Eliot, Charles William (1853), President 
of Harvard College, 398; J. H. Choate's 
prophecy concerning, 53 

Samuel (1839), 26, 172 

■ Thomas Dawes, 19 

Elizabeth, Empress of Austria, 130 

Ellis, Rev. Rufus (1838), 22 

Emmanuel Church, Boston, gifts of 
H. P. Arnold to, 16 

Emmerton, James Walter, 329, 329 re 

Endicott, William Crowninshield (1847), 

5 2 
Endowments, by, or in memory of, mem- 
bers of the Class of 1852, 428-430 
Eschenburg, Johann Joachim, 365 
Este, David K., son of Moses, 81 
David Kirkpatrick, son of William 

Miller, 82 
Louis Ercole, son of William 

Miller, 83 

Louise (Miller), wife of David K., 81 

Mary (Goddard), wife of William 

Miller, 82 

Moses, 81 

William Miller, son of David K., 

330; sketch of, 81-83 
Eugenie, wife of Napoleon III, 67 
Evans, Lieut. Ellwood Waller, 97 
■ Mary Eastburn (Head), wife of 

Lieut. Ellwood W., 97 
Evarts, William Maxwell, 49 
Everett, Rev. Edward (181 1), President 

of Harvard College, 68, 287, 321, 324, 

366; gift of, to a freshman for purchase 

of an overcoat, 430 
Exhibitions, programmes of, 261-265; 

character of, 335 



r ACULTY, 1848-1852, lists of, 250- 
251; personal recollections of, 321-325 

Farnsworth, Carrie E. (George), wife of 
Dr. Coddington Billings, 235 

Dr. Coddington Billings, son of 

Dr. Ralph, sketch of, 235 



Farnsworth, Eunice (Billings), wife of Dr. 

Ralph, 235 

Dr. Ralph (1821), 235 

Farragut, Admiral David Glasgow, 195 
Farwell, John, 115 

Lucy, wife of John, 115 

Fay, Charles Spencer, son of Edwin 

Hedge, 85 

Edwin (1817), 83 

Edwin Hedge, son of Edwin, 163; 

sketch of, 83-85; quoted, on A. Spencer, 

164 
Edwin Whitfield, son of Edwin 

Hedge, 84 
Harriet Porter (White), wife of 

Edwin, 83 

Jonathan (1778), 85 

Lucy Ella, daughter of Edwin 

Hedge, 85 
Rhoda (White), wife of Jonathan, 

85 - 
Sarah Elizabeth, daughter of Ed- 
win Hedge. See Morgan 
Sarah Elizabeth (Shields), wife of 

Edwin Hedge, 84 

Thornwell, son of Edwin Hedge, 84 

Felton, Cornelius Conway (1827), 27, 

27 n, 34, 207, 325, 389, 389 n, 390 
John Brooks (1847), 388, 388 n; 

prepares boys for college, 72, 72 n, 8o, 

104, 151, 242 
Field, Rev. George, 221 

Nicholas, acknowledgment to, vii 

First Church in Boston, 43 n, 127 n, 132 n 
Fisher, Elizabeth P. (Huntington), wife 

of George, 85 
Emma (Chichester), first wife of 

George Huntington, 86 

George, 85 

George Chichester (1881), son of 

George Huntington, 86 
GEORGEHuNTiNGTON,son of George, 

229; sketch of, 85-87; quoted, on J. 

Porter, 140; on C. Wright, 228; mem- 
bership of, in college societies, 367, 368 
Katharine (Weeks), second wife of 

George Huntington, 86 
Mamie Esther, adopted daughter 

of George Huntington. See Benoit 

Dr. Theodore Willis, 202 

Fisher, Denly & Provost, lawyers, 86 
Fiske, Andrew Henry, 217 

Charles Henry (1893), 187 

Mary Duncan (Thorndike), wife of 

Charles Henry, 187 
Fitchburg Railroad station near Harvard 

Square, 326 
Fogg, Emily (Ware), wife of James P., 108 

James P., 108 

Forbes, John Murray, 179 
Robert Bennett, 135 



44I 



Index 



Forrest, Edwin, 123 n 

Fowle, Barbara Ward (Saunders), wife of 

Robert Rollins, 236 
Ellen Moore, daughter of Robert 

Rollins. See Campbell 
Esther De Sheill (Taylor), wife of 

William Holmes, 235 

■ George, son of Robert Rollins, 236 

Robert Rollins, son of William 

Holmes, 365; sketch of, 235-236; 

membership of, in college societies, 

349 

William Holmes (1826), 235 

Fowler, Judge Asa, 236, 240 

Francis, Rev. Convers (1815), 27, 27 n, 

332,415,426 
Franklin, Benjamin, 85 
Franz Joseph, Emperor of Austria, 130 
Fremont, John Charles, 114 
Freshman year, members who joined the 

class after the, 259 
Fuller, Rev. Arthur Buckminster (1843), 

22 



G 



TALE, Anna Q. (Gale), first wife of 

William Boynton, 236 
Cassandra (McKinney), second wife 

of William Boynton, 237 
— ■ — ■ Harriet (Boynton), wife of John, 236 

John, 236 

John P., son of William Boynton, 

237 

William Boynton, son of John, 

sketch of, 236-237 

Gardiner, Caroline (Perkins), wife of 
William Howard, 87 

Charles Perkins, son of William 

Howard, 185 

John Sylvester, son of William 

Howard, 272; sketch of, 87-88; mem- 
bership of, in college societies, 400 

William Howard (1816), 87, 185 

Gardner, James, 211 

Mary, wife of James, 211 

Gardner & Coolidge, 70 

Garfield, James Abram, President, 30; 
H. Alger's life of, 8 

Garrison, William Lloyd, 76 

Gaskin, Hannah C, wife of John W. ; 

John W., 32 

Gay, George (1810), 23 

Dr. George Washington, 46 n; 

knowledgment to, 43 n 

Geddings, Dr. Eli, 129 

Gibbs, George C, 21 

Jonathan, 89 

Relief, wife of Jonathan, 89 

Gilbert, Samuel C, 244 

Gillis, James Andrew (1849), 58, 58 n 

Gilman, Nathaniel, 137 



32 



Gilman House, Exeter, N. H., 137 

Goddard, Rev. Kingston, 82 

Goodhue, Frederick, 139 

Goodrich, Charles B., 79 

Gorham, John, 116 

Gould, Jay, E. E. Anderson conducts suit 

against, 12 
Gradolph, Alfred Peter, 431, 431 n 
Grant, Ulysses Simpson, President, 79 
Graves, Anne Elizabeth (Stickney), wife 

of Orrin P., 246 

Orrin P., 246 

Grav, Asa, 366 

John, 88 

Levi, son of John, sketch of, 88-89 

Samuel Calley (181 1), 18 

Sarah E. (Gibbs) Nichols, second 

wife of Levi, 89 

Sarah (Knight), wife of John, 88 

Sophia K. (Harwood), first wife of 

Levi, 88 
Green, Dr. Samuel Abbott (185 1), 245 
Greene, Charles Winston (1802), 34, 34 n 
Greenleaf, Benjamin, 30 
Greenwood, Augustus Goodwin, son 

of Rev. Francis William Pitt, 365; 

sketch of, 89; membership of, in college 

societies, 349, 368, 385 

Rev. Francis William Pitt (1814), 89 

A'laria (Goodwin), wife of Rev. 

Francis William Pitt, 89 
Gregory, Abigail (Smith), wife of William, 

9° 

Anna L., daughter of Edwin Smith, 

90,91 
Clara M. (Baldwin), wife of Edwin 

Smith, 90, 91 
Edwin Smith, son of William, 113, 

338; sketch of, 89-91; membership of, 

in college societies, 395 
Hattie M., daughter of Edwin 

Smith, 90, 91 

William, 89 

Gurney, Ellen Sturgis (Hooper), wife of 

Ephraim Whitman, 94, 94 n; makes 

bequest to Harvard College with which 

two professorships are founded, 430 
Ephraim Whitman, son of Nathan, 

42, 109, 184, 230; sketch of, 92-94; 

membership of, in college societies, 

385, 395 

Nathan, 92 

Sarah (Whitman), wife of Nathan, 

92 



R 



.AGAR, Daniel B., 117 
Hale, Rev. Edward Everett (1839), son 
of Nathan, 24; quoted, on H. G. 
Denny, 76 
George Silsbee (1844), 197 



442 



Index 



Hale, Nathan, 7, 404 

■ Nathan (1838), son of Nathan, 7 

Haley, Mary. See Winslow 

Hall, Rev. Edward Henry (185 1), quoted, 

on J. B. Thayer, 181, 181 n; tribute of, 

to R. Ware, 202-203 
Hamilton, Sir William, C. Wright com- 
pared to, 228 
Hanscom, James, 247 

■ Mary, wife of James, 247 

Harding, John, 237 

John, son of Gen. William Giles, 

sketch of, 237-238 

John, son of John (1852), 237 

John, grandson of John (1852), 

237 
Margaret Murphy Owen, second 

wife of John (1852), 237 
Sophie M., daughter of John (1852). 

See Johnson 
Sophy W. (Merritt), first wife of 

John (1852), 237 

William G., son of John (1852), 237 

Gen. William Giles, son of John, 

Harrison, William Henry, President, 204, 

204 n 
Harrison & Burrall, lawyers, 208 
Hartwell, Shattuck (1844), 332, 332 n, 

353, 353 n, 354, 354 n, 355, 355 n, 

363, 363 n, 365, 367, 386, 386 n, 388, 

388 n, 389, 38971 
Harvard, Rev. John, 429; memorial to, 

by J. H. Choate, 51 
Harvard Boat Club, and Class of 1852, 

347 

Harvard Club of Boston, 224 

Harvard Club of New York City, 60; 

founds Choate Memorial Fellowship, 

429 
Harvard College, Dana Scholarship, 73; 

power of electing overseers transferred 

from state legislature to the alumni, 

chiefly by efforts of D. E. Ware, 198; 

life and customs at, in 1848-1852, 328- 

338 
Harvard Hall, burning of, 360 
Harvard Lodge of the Independent Order 

of Odd Fellows, and Class of 1852, 348; 

the society abolished, 349 
Harvard Natural History Society, and 

the Class of 1852, 367 
Harvard-Yale Regatta, first, 347-348 
Harvey, Harold M., cited, on H. Alger, 

9 
Harwood, Nahum, 88 
Sophia (Kimball), wife of Nahum, 

88 
Hasbrouck, Garret D., 80 
Hasty Pudding Club, and the Class of 

1852, 368, 398 



Haven, John Appleton (1813), 222 

■ Judge -, 413 

Lydia Gibbon (Sears), wife of 

Samuel Foster, 95 

Samuel, 101 

S. G., 192 

Samuel Foster (1826), 95, 96 n 

Dr. Samuel Foster, son of Samuel 

Foster, 128; sketch of, 95-97 
Haynes, Henry Williamson (1851), 384 
Hazard, E. W., 16 
Hazelton, Horace L. H, 36 
Hazing, 331 

Head, George Edward (1812), 97 
George Edward, son of George 

Edward, 127, 168, 365; sketch of, 97-99; 

oration by, 350-356; membership of, 

in college societies, 349, 385, 392, 393, 

394, 401 

■ Hannah (Catlin), wife of George 

- Edward, 97 
Lydia (Barry), wife of George 

Edward (1852), 97 
Margaret Gray, daughter of George 

Edward (1852). See Duff 
Mary Eastburn, daughter of George 

Edward (1852). See Evans 
Hedge, Rev. Lemuel (1759), 85 

■ Levi (1792), 83 

Hemsley, Horace, 420, 420 n 
Henrico County Prison, 154 
Hepworth, Rev. George Hughes, 38 n 
Hersey, Heloise Edwina, tribute of, to 

E. E. Pratt, 142-143 
Hewitt, Abram Stevens, 13 
Higginson, Col. Thomas Wentworth 

(1841), 101 n 
Waldo (1833), founds George B. 

Sohier Prize, 428 
Hill, George W., 99 
James Seneca, son of George W., 

sketch of, 99-iao 

Sallie (Albee), wife of George W., 99 

Hilliard, Catharine Dexter (Haven), wife 

of William, 101 
Catherine Haven, daughter of Fran- 
cis William, 102 

Francis (1823), son of William, 101 

Francis, son of Francis William, 101 

Francis William, son of Francis 

(1823), 121, 338; sketch of, 101-102; 

membership of, in college societies, 367, 

385. 395; song by, 396-397 
George Johnson, son of Francis 

William, 102 
Margaret Burgoyne, daughter of 

Francis William, 102 
Maria Nash (Johnson), wife of 

Francis William, 101, 102 
Samuel Iredell, son of Francis 

William, 102 



443 



Index 



Hilliard, William, 101 

Hoar, Ann Borrodaile (Blakely), first 

wife of John Emory, 103 
David Blakely (1876), son of John 

Emory, 103, 104 
Frederic Albee, son of John Emory, 

103 

Hiram, 102 

John Emory, son of Hiram, sketch 

of, 102-104; membership of, in college 

societies, 367 
Lucy A. (Demond), second wife of 

John Emory, 103 
Mary Tuck (Jones), third wife of 

John Emory, 103 

Sarah (Smith), wife of Hiram, 102 

■ See also Horr 

Hodges, George Atkinson, 160 
Hodges & Saltonstall, 48 
Hog Island, and the Choates, 55 
Holmes, Dr. Edward Lorenzo (1849), 

128 
Dr. Oliver Wendell (1829), 52; 

quoted, 148; verses of, on his nephew, 

C. W. Upham (1852), 192 

R.H.,33 

Home for Little Wanderers, Boston, J. 

Huntington's interest in, no 
Hooper, Alice (Mason), wife of William 

Sturgis, 105 
— ■ — Anna (Sturgis), wife of Samuel, 104 
Ellen (Sturgis), wife of Dr. Robert 

William, 94 
Isabella Wyman, daughter of Wil- 
liam Sturgis, 105 
— — Nathaniel Leech (1846), 104, 390 

Dr. Robert William (1830), 94 

Samuel, 104, 184; founds Sturgis- 

Hooper Professorship, 429 
William Sturgis, son of Samuel, 

87, 155 n, 184, 185; sketch of, 104-106; 

membership of, in college societies, 367, 

38S 
Horace, W. C. Williamson an authority 

on, 223-224 
Horr, George Washington, son of Maj. 

Warren, sketch of, 238-239 
Sarah Pierce (Sloan), wife of Maj. 

Warren, 238 

Maj. Warren, 238 

See also Hoar 

Hosmer, Rev. James Kendall (1855), 

acknowledgment to, viii 
Howard, Amasa, 247 
Catharine Lathrop, quoted, on C. 

Wright, 230 
Elizabeth Winslow (Chase), wife 

of Dr. John Clark (1825), 239 
Henry, Governor of Rhode Island, 

114 
Dr. John Clark (1790), 239 



Howard, Dr. John Clark (1825), son of 

Dr. John Clark (1790), 239 
John Clark, son of Dr. John 

Clark (1825), sketch of, 239 

Sally, wife of Amasa, 247 

Howe, Caroline, daughter of Francis 

Saltonstall. See Packard 
Fannie J. (Fogg), wife of Francis 

Saltonstall, 108 
Francis Saltonstall, son of Isaac 

Redington, sketch of, 106-108 

Isaac Redington (18 10), 106 

Mary Ware, daughter of Francis 

Saltonstall. See Straus 
Sarah (Saltonstall), wife of Isaac 

Redington, 106 

William Edward, 40c 

Hubbard, Lucius Frederick, Governor of 

Minnesota, 241 

William J., 180 . 

Hubbard & Story, lawyers, 239 
Hudson, John Elbridge (1862), 197 
Hudson, Ohio, founders of, 90 
Humboldt, Baron Alexander von, 190, 

191 
Huntington, Charles Asa, son of James, 

109 
Eliza Prentiss, daughter of James, 

109 

Right Rev. Frederic Dan, 22 

Hannah L. (Stevens), wife of 

James, 109 
James, son of Jonathan, 90, 94, 410; 

sketch of, 108-111; membership of, in 

college societies, 385 

Jonathan, 108 

Jonathan Gurney, son of James, 1 09, 

410 
Sally (Hickox), wife of Jonathan, 

108 
Samuel, signer of the Declaration of 

Independence, 108 
Hurd, Charles Henry (1853), 347 
Francis William, son of William, 

150, 205, 208, 222, 223; sketch of, Hi- 
ll 2; membership of, in college societies, 

367,392,393»40i 
James Van Alen, son of Dr. Samuel 

Hutchins, 112 

John, 112 

Louise (Coolidge), wife of Alfred 

Dennis, 67 
Lucie (Van Alen), wife of Dr. Sam- 
uel Hutchins, 112 

Mary (Parks), wife of William, ill 

Persis (Hutchins), wife of John, 112 

Dr. Samuel Hutchins, son of John, 

22; sketch of, 112-113; membership of, 

in college societies, 367, 398 

William, in 

Huron, U. S. gunboat, 168 



444 



Index 



Hutchins, John Willson (1853), 348 
Hutchins & Wheeler, lawyers, n 1 
Hutchinson, Anne, 150 
Hyer, Tom, prizefighter, 3 53, 3 53 n 



I 



ADMA, and the class of 1852, 369 
Ingalls, Dr. William (1790), 167 
Ingraham, Rev. John Henniker, 117 
Institute of 1770, and the class of 1852, 

384-392 
Ireson, Ellen (Wheeler), wife of Samuel 

Edwin, 239 n, 240 
Samuel Edwin, son of Samuel 

Jenks, sketch of, 239-240 

Samuel Jenks, 239 

Sarah (Johnson), wife of Samuel 

Jenks, 239 

J ACK-KNIFE prize, 58 n, 227, 227 n, 

271, 272, 272 n 
Jackson, Andrew, President, 226 

Dr. Charles Thomas, 400 

Henry R., 129 

Mrs. Howell E., 237 

Thomas Jonathan, called Stonewall, 

12 
Jacobs, Justin Allen (1839), 117 
James, Henry, 173 
Jenifer, Daniel of St. Thomas, 243 n 
Jenks, Thomas, 114 
Jennison, James, 240 
■ James (1849), son of James, tutor, 

26, 26 n, 240 n 

James, son of Samuel Pearse, 242 

■ Lucia A. K. (Wood), wife of Samuel 

Pearse, 240 
■ Mary Emelia, daughter of Dr. 

Timothy Lindall, 101, 101 n 

Mary (Lamb), wife of James, 240 

Paul, son of Samuel Pearse, 242 

Samuel Pearse, son of James, 371; 

sketch of, 240-242; membership of, in 

college societies, 369 

Theodore, son of Samuel Pearse, 242 

Dr. Timothy Lindall (1782), 101 n 

Wellington, son of Samuel Pearse, 

242 
John, King of Saxony, 173 
Johnson, Granville S., 237 
Henry Augustinus (1844), proctor, 

388, 388 m 

Rev. Samuel I., 101 

Sophie M. (Harding), wife of Gran- 
ville S., 237 
Jones, Henry, 103 

■ Sophia (Tuck), wife of Henry, 103 

Josselyn, Emeline Ellis, daughter of 

Lewis Ellis, 242 
Emeline (Ellis), wife of Lewis, 242 



Josselyn, Laura Janetta, daughter of 

Lewis Ellis, 242 

Lewis, 242 

Lewis Ellis, son of Lewis, sketch 

of, 242 
Mary A. (Ropes), wife of Lewis 

Ellis, 242 
Mary Elizabeth, daughter of Lewis 

Ellis, 242 
Joynes, Col. Levin, 41, 41 n 
Junior year, members who joined the 

class in the, 259 



1827), 



IVEEP, Dr. Nathan Cooley (r, 

133 
Kemp, Edward D., 244 

Kershaw, , 151 

Kiernan, Thomas ("Patty"), janitor, 

322, 391, 391 n 
Kimball, Abby Viles (Spencer), wife of 

Jerome Bonaparte, 115 
Arthur L., son of Jerome Bonaparte, 

"5 , . r r 

Elizabeth S. (Babcock), wife of 

William S., 73 

Helen E., daughter of Jerome Bona- 
parte, 115 

Jerome Bonaparte, son of Silas 

H., 272, 338, 371; sketch of, 113-115; 
membership of, in college societies, 369 

Mary (Evans), wife of Silas H., 113 

Silas H., 113 

William S., 73 

King, Abbie J. (Farwell), wife of Ben- 
jamin Flint, 115 

Benjamin Flint, son of Daniel 

Putnam (1823), sketch of, 115-116 

Daniel Putnam (1823), 115 

Daniel Putnam, son of Benjamin 

Flint, 116 

Edward (1853), 399 

Sarah Page, daughter of Benjamin 

Flint. See Upton 

Sarah Page (Flint), wife of Daniel 

Putnam (1823), 115 

Rev. Thomas Starr, 22, 193 

King's Chapel, Boston, 155 n 

Knights' Punch Bowl, and the class of 
1852, 392-394 

Kossuth, Louis, 12; visits Harvard 
College, 33s 



L, 



rfAMSON, Elder , Adventist, 350 

Lane, Frederick Athearn (1849), his 

Latin hymn used at inauguration of 

Pres. Sparks, 425-426 

George Martin (1846), 92, 92 n 

La Rocque, Joseph, 59 

Lathrop, Judge John (/ 1855), 218, 218 n 



445 



Index 



Lawrence, Amos Adams (1835), 27 
Lawrence Scientific School, 429 
Lawyers, members who became, 341 
Lee, Mrs. , sister of G. Scott, 244 n, 

245 

Edwin Gregory, 91 

George Cabot (1850), 160, 160 n 

Gen. Robert Edward, 116 

Dr. Roger Irving (1902), 132 n, 430 

Col. William Raymond, 154 

Leech, John, caricaturist, 169 
Leeds, James F., 210 

Mary (Wood), wife of James F., 210 

Legray, Gustave, 158 

Lesley, Mary, daughter of Peter. See 

Ames 

Peter, quoted, on C. Wright, 229 

Susan Inches (Lyman), wife of 

Peter, 229 
Leverett, Anna Tate, daughter of Rev. 

William Cole, 118 

Rev. Charles Edward, 116, 116 n 

Cornelia (Ingraham), wife of Rev. 

William Cole, 117, 118 

Frederic Percival (1821), 116 

Dr. Frederic Percival, son of 

Frederic Percival (1821), sketch of, 

116-117; membership of, in college 

societies, 401 
John (1680), President of Harvard 

College, 43 n, 360, 36072 
Mary A. (Cole), wife of Rev. 

William, 117, 118 
Mary Parker, daughter of Rev. 

William Cole, 118 
Matilda (Gorham), wife of Frederic 

Percival (1821), 116 

Thomas, memorial tablet to, 127 n 

Rev. William, 117 

William (1885), son of Rev. William 

Cole, 118 
Rev. William Cole, son of Rev. 

William, 102; sketch of, 117-118 
Lincoln, Dr. Levi (1789), 200 
Lincoln, Maynard & Chatfield, lawyers, 

238 
Lincoln Club, tribute of, to W. H. Waring, 

209 
Livermore, Charles Frederick (1853), 347 
Lloyd, Alicia (McBain), wife of Edward, 

188 

Edward, 188 

Lochiel (Donald Cameron, of Lochiel), 

a descendant of, 68 
Lodge, Mrs. James, 89 
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 26, 26 n, 

68, 223, 324; reference to his "Village 

Blacksmith," 22 
Lord, Nathaniel James (1825), 135 
Loring, Aaron K., 7, 8 
Charles Greeley (1812), 161, 216 



Louis, Pierre Charles Alexandre, 128 
Lovering, Joseph (1833), 26, 26 n, 92, 

92 n, 415 
Lowe, Rev. Charles (1847), proctor, 390 
Lowell, Judge John (1843), 20 
Mrs. Charles Russell, entertains 

Kossuth, 335 

James Russell (1838), 93, 173, 247 

Luaces, Eliza Hackstaff (Waring), wife 

of Dr. Emilio de, 123 n 

Dr. Emilio de, 123 n 

Lunt, Rev. William Parsons (1823), 151, 

152 
Lyman, Anne Jean, wife of Joseph, 179, 

179 n, 229 

Arthur Theodore (1853), 190, 190 n 



M. 



LcKIM, Margaret D. (Hollins), wife 
of William, 1 18 

William, 118 

William Duncan, son of William, 

sketch of, 118-119; membership of, in 
college societies, 346, 368 

McKinley, William, President, 182 

McKinney, Catherine, wife of William, 
237 

William, 237 

Macmillan, Flavius Josephus, 431, 431 n 

McNallv, David, 118 

Michael, 188 

R. M., 243 

Samuel, 244 

Macready, William Charles, 123 n 

Mahan, Dennis Hart, 80 

Man, Frederick H., quoted, on E. E. 
Anderson, 14 

Manchester, Rev. Alfred {dv 1872), ac- 
knowledgment to, 25 n 

Mann & Rodman, lawyers, 1 1 1 

Marsh, John C, 30 

Marshall, William Rainey, Governor of 
Minnesota, 241 

Mason, Jonathan, 105 

Walter, 236 

Mather, Rev. Increase (1656), President 
of Harvard College, 359, 3S9 » 

Mathewson, Lucy Madeline (Stickney), 
wife of W. W., 173 

W. W., 173 

Matthews, Albert (1882), acknowledg- 
ment to, viii 

Maurice, James, 86 

Maxwell, James Audley, 68 

Mead, John Noyes,_352, 352 n 

Memorial Day, origin of, 212 

Memorial Hall, Class of 1852 contributes 
to subscription for, 428 

Middlesex Fells, P. C. Brooks's interest 
in, 28 

Miles, Charles Appleton (1853), 347 



446 



Index 



Miller, Joaquin, 165 

William, Adventist, 350, 350 n 

William, of New Orleans, 81, 82 

Mills, William, college bell-ringer, 303, 

303 n, 332, 391, 391 n 
Mock parts, 266-268, 336 
Mohr, Henry, son of Henry Moore, 243 
Montgomery, Elizabeth White (Silsbee), 

wife of Winslow Lewis, 160 

Winslow Lewis, 160 

Moore, Annie L., daughter of Henry, 243 
Eliza Ellen (Rhodes), wife of Henry, 

243 

■ Francis, 242 

Frank T., son of Henry, 243 

Frederick W., son of Henry, 243 

Henry, son of Francis, sketch of, 

242-243 

Henry. See Mohr, Henry 

Ida L., daughter of Henry, 243 

Mary, daughter of Henry, 243 

Sarah (Cheever), wife of Francis, 

242 
Morgan, H. A., 84, 85 
Sarah Elizabeth (Fay), wife of H. A., 

85 
Morse, John Torrey (i860), 197 
Mystic Valley Parkway, P. C. Brooks's 

gift towards, 28 



N/ 



I ALL, Mira Elizabeth Woods (Hoge), 

wife of Rev. Robert, 163 

■ Rev. Robert, 163 

Napoleon III, Emperor of the French, 

wedding procession of, 67 
National Guard, New York, J. Porter's 

work for, 140, 141 
Native American Party, 123 n 
Navy Club celebration, 271 
Neal, Benjamin, 119 
Edwin Horatio, son of Benjamin, 

371; sketch of, 119-120; membership 

of, in college societies, 367, 369, 401 
Eunice (Daniell), wife of Benjamin, 

"9 
George Benjamin (1846), son of 

Benjamin, 1 19 
Nelaton, Auguste, 128 
New England Society in the City of New 

York, 60 
New York Botanical Garden, A. Brown's 

interest in, 32 
Nichols, Alfred E., 89 
Sarah Chamberlain, wife of Thad- 

deus, 43 

Thaddeus, 43 

Nicholson, Rev. William Rufus, 134 
Nickerson, Susan B., 74 
Nicknames, 336 
Noble, Bowen Chandler, 137 



Noble, John (1850), tribute of, to D. E. 
Ware, 199 

Susan Smith (Chandler), wife of 

Bowen Chandler, 137 

Norris, Elizabeth (Sewall), wife of 
Shepherd Haynes, 120 

George Walter, son of Shepherd 

Haynes, 58, 98, 119, 167, 205, 207, 
208, 222, 329, 333, 335, 336; sketch 
of, 120-126; C. E. Stedman's verses 
in memory of, 169-170; membership 
of, in college societies, 346, 349, 367, 
368, 385, 392, 393, 394 

Shepherd Haynes, 120 

Norris Infantry, 123 

Norton, Charles Eliot (1846), 93 

Norton family, 229 

Noyes, Rev. George Rapall (1818), 22, 
27, 27 n, 322, 332 



o, 



'HIO Falls Car Company, J. W. 
Sprague's connection with, 165 

Old State House, Boston, preservation of, 
149 

Oliver, Henry Kemble (1818), 126 

Dr. Henry Kemble, son of Henry 

Kemble (1818), 57, 165, 166, 188,201, 
24S> 329, 329«> 391; 398, 401, 421; ac- 
knowledgment to, vii; contributes to 
publication of this volume, xv; quoted, 
on J. E. Blake, 18; sketch of, 126-132, 
132 n; tribute of, to J. W. Sprague, 166; 
quoted, on L. Agassiz, 323; on F. Sales, 
324; membership of, in college societies, 
349, 384, 385, 401; gives funds for 
professorship of hygiene, 430 

Sarah (Cook) , wife of Henry Kemble 

(1818), 126 

Thomas, 127; memorial tablet to, 

127 n 

Thomas Edward (1903), 329 

Omnibuses, Cambridge to Boston, 326, 
326 n 

Oneida, boat used in first Harvard-Yale 
regatta, 347 

Oppolzer, Dr., 129 

Otis Library, Norwich, Ct., Librarian of, 
acknowledgment to, viii 

Overcoat, President E. Everett's gift 
of, to J. B. Thayer, who proposes per- 
petual transmission of similar gift, 430 



-T ACKARD, Caroline (Howe), wife of 

George, 108 

George, 108 

Padrones, Italian, cruelties of, exposed by 

H. Alger, 8 
Page, Calvin, 132 
Dr. Calvin Gates, son of Calvin, 



447 



Index 



3, 25, 44, 58, 77, 109, 119, 128, 184, 201, 
333, 346, 365, 410; sketch of, 132-134; 
his account of Class Day, from Class 
Book, 305-307; membership of, in 
college societies, 349, 367, 368, 384, 
385, 392, 393, 399 

Dr. Calvin Gates (1890), son of Dr. 

Calvin Gates (1852), 134 

Edith, daughter of Dr. Calvin 

Gates (1852), 133, 134 

Fanny Bliss, daughter of Dr. 

Calvin Gates (1852), 134 

Hollis Bowman, son of Dr. Calvin 

Gates (1852), 134 

John H. W., 20 

Nathan Keep, son of Dr. Calvin 

Gates (1852), 134 

Philinda (Gates), wife of Calvin, 

132 

Susan Haskell (Keep), wife of Dr. 

Calvin Gates (1852), 133 

Paine, Charles Jackson (1853), 347 

Palfrey, Francis Winthrop (185 1), 127, 
348 

Parietal Committee, 1849-1852, 250-251 

Parietal Freshman, 6 n 

Park, John Cochran (1824), 68 

Parker, Francis Edward (1841), 66, 198 

Isaac, 168 

Parrott, William F., 70 

Parsons, Thomas William (h 1853), 
verses of, to J. B. Thayer, 180-18 1; 
verses of, after hearing sermon by C. 
C. Vinal, 194 

Peabody, Augusta Jay (Balch) Nielson, 
wife of George Augustus, 136 

Clara (Endicott), wife of George 

(1823), 135 

George (1823), 135, 158 

George, of London, 136 

George Augustus, son of George 

(1823), contributes to publication of 
this volume, xv; sketch of, 135-136; 
last survivor of the class, 136; mem- 
bership of, in college societies, 368, 
399, 400, 401 

Joseph Augustus (1816), 135 

Peabody Institute, Danvers, 136 

Peabody Museum, Cambridge, contri- 
bution to, 135 

Peabody Museum, Salem, 136 

Peaslee, Edmund Randolph, 112 

Peirce, Benjamin (1829), 322, 334, 355, 
355 n, 374, 387, 390, 390W 

Peirson, Gen. Charles Lawrence, con- 
tributes to publication of this volume, 
xv 

Penmanship, H. G. Denny's interest in, 76 

Perry, Abigail (Gilman), 136, 137 

John Taylor, son of William, 208; 

sketch of, 136-138 



Perry, Sarah (Noble), wife of JohnTaylor, 

137, 138 

William (1811), 136 

Perry & Endicott, lawyers, 160 
Petrie, William Matthew Flinders, 175 
Phi Beta Kappa, Harvard Chapter, and 

the Class of 1852, 182, 395-397 
Philbrick, Edward Southwick (1846), 

205 
Phillips, John P., 243 

Jonathan, 216 

Saint Thomas Jenifer, son of 

John P., sketch of, 243-244 

Stephen Henry (1842), 58, 58 n 

Phillips & Gillis, lawyers, 58 

Phipps, Elizabeth Goodhue, wife of 

William Henry, 139 
Maria Dennis (Staniford), wife of 

Samuel, 138 

Samuel, 138 

William Henry, son of Samuel, 

sketch of, 138-139 
Phvsicians, members who became, 341 
Pi Eta, 398 
Pierce, Franklin, President, 236, 348, 

.34.8 m 
Pierian Sodality, and the Class of 1852, 

.397-398 
Pierpont, Rev. John, 22 
Pike, Rev. Richard, 22 
Pitman, Mark, 60 
Pitner, William, 220 
Poor, John Alfred, 246 
Pope, Maj.-Gen. John, 144, 146 
Porcellian Club, and the Class of 1852, 

399-400 
Pormort, Philemon, schoolmaster, 43 n 
Porter, Caroline Hamilton (Rice), wife 

of Josiah, 139-140 

Admiral David Dixon, 220 

Edwin J., son of Josiah, 140 

Gen. Fitz-John, J. H. Choate's 

defence of, 50 

James, son of Josiah, 140 

Josiah, son of Zachariah B., 23, 

365; sketch of, 1 39-141; membership 

of, in college societies, 349 
Mary, daughter of Josiah. See 

Robinson 
Mary (Kingsbury), wife of Zach- 
ariah B., 139 
Ruth, daughter of Josiah. See 

Doster 

Zachariah B., 139 

Post office, private, conducted by A. W. 

Thayer, 178 
Pradas, Daude de, A. Stickney's edition 

of poem by, 173 

Pratt, Dr. , 151 

Mrs., wife of Longfellow's village 

blacksmith, 22 



448 



Index 



Pratt, Abigail H. (Lodge), wife of George 

Langdon, 141 
— ■ — Alice Ellerton, daughter of Edward 

Ellerton. See Burr 
Bela Lyon, tablet to D. W. Cheever 

by, 46 n 
Edward Ellerton, son of George 

Langdon, 87, 185; sketch of, 141-143; 

membership of, in college societies, 

368, 400, 401 

Rev. Frank Wright, 41 

George Langdon, 141 

Helen Choate, daughter of Edward 

Ellerton. See Prince 
Margaret Lovell (Cary), wife of 

Rev. Frank Wright, 41 
Mary (Adams), wife of William W., 

214 
Miriam Foster (Choate), wife of 

Edward Ellerton, 141, 143 

William W-, 214 

President's Freshman, 6, 6 n 

Presidents and royalties seen by H. K. 

Oliver, 131 
Preyer, Wilhelm, 35 
Prichard, William, 59 n 
Prichard, Choate & Smith, lawyers, 59 
Prince, Charles Albert (1873), 143 
Helen Choate (Pratt), wife of 

Charles Albert, 141, 143 
Prizes and scholarships founded by, or in 

memory of, members of the Class of 

1852, 428-430 
Prizes, deturs, etc., won by members of 

the Class of 1852, 260 
Psi Upsilon Chapter, at Harvard, found- 
ing of, 321 
Publication of this volume, list of con- 
tributors to, xv 
Punch bowls presented to Harvard 

College by William Stoughton, 306 
Putnam, Rufus, schoolmaster, 57 



Q 



UINCY, Josiah (1821), 143 

— Mary Jane (Miller), wife of Josiah, 

H3 

— S. H., 348 

— ■ Samuel Miller, son of Josiah, 128, 
155 n, 364, 364 n; sketch of, 143-150; 
tribute of, to G. B. Sohier, 161; mem- 
bership of, in college societies, 349, 
368, 401 



R, 



JULROAD Jubilee, Boston, 1851,405 
Ramsey, Alexander, Governor of Min- 
nesota, 240 
Rand, Dr. Isaac (1787), 183 n 
Rantoul, Robert Samuel (1853), 216, 
216 n; quoted, on Exhibitions, 335; his 



description of Mrs. Lowell's reception 
to Kossuth, 335 n 

Rathbone, Sarah Waterman (Brown), 
wife of Stephen K., 34 

Stephen K., 34 

Rauch, Christian Daniel, 191 

Rebellion Tree, 331, 362, 386 

Reed, John H., 105 

Reid, Dr. Thomas, quoted, 284 

Revere, Dr. Edward Hutchinson Rob- 
bins, son of Joseph Warren, 153, 153 n, 

154. 155 n 
Frank Dabney, son of Paul Joseph, 

150 

Joseph Warren, 150 

Lucretia Watson (Lunt), wife of 

Paul Joseph, 152 
Mary (Robbins), wife of Joseph 

Warren, 150 
Paul Joseph, son of Joseph Warren, 

142, 330; sketch of, 150-155, 155 n; 

membership of, in college societies, 368, 

400, 401 
Pauline, daughter of Paul Joseph. 

See Thayer 
Rhodes, Trevett Mansfield, 243 
Rice, Rev. Gardner, 99 
Richardson, Asa, 155 

Elizabeth (Bird), wife of Asa, 155 

■ : Horace, son of Asa, 157, 201, 346, 

365, 414, 421; sketch of, 155-156; mem- 
bership of, in college societies, 349, 367, 

.385, 392, 398, 401 
Richter, , 58; his system of drawing, 

.33 6 

Ricketson, Benjamin Tucker, 223 

Sarah Howland. See Williamson 

Riddler, A. G., 220 

Riggs, Catharine Gilbert, daughter of 

Thomas, 244 
Catharine W. (Gilbert), second wife 

of Thomas, 244 
Elizabeth Swan (Kemp), first wife 

of Thomas, 244 
Margaret (Norris), wife of Samuel, 

244 
Margaretta, daughter of Thomas, 

244 
Nannie Kemp, daughter of Thomas, 

244 

■ Samuel, 244 

Thomas, son of Samuel, sketch of, 

244 

Thomas Gilbert, son of Thomas, 244 

Ripley, Rev. Samuel (1804), 180, 181 
Sarah (Bradford), wife of Rev. 

Samuel, 180, 181 
Robinson, Charles L., 141 

Lucius, 13 

Mary (Porter), wife of Charles L., 

141 



449 



Index 



Robiscault , boatman, 151, 152 

Rodgers, Edwin Aldrich, son of Josiah 

W. Rogers, sketch of, 156-158 
Harriet G. (Merrow), wife of Edwin 

Aldrich, 156, 157 
Rogers, Josiah W., 156 
Lydia S. (Aldrich), wife of Josiah 

W., 156 
Ropes, Andrew, 242 
Roxbury pudding stone, 323 
Royalties and presidents seen by H. K. 

Oliver, 131 
Rumford Society, 400-401 



OALES, Francis, 26, 26 n, 324 
Saltonstall, Eleanor (Brooks), wife of 

Richard Middlecott, 28 

Leverett (1844), 52 

Richard Middlecott (1880), 28 

William Gurdon, 135 

Sanger, George Partridge (1840), 79, 79 n 
Sargent, Dr. Henry, 95 
Saunders, Dr. Addison Hunton, 236 
Ellen (Moore), wife of Dr. Addison 

Hunton, 236 
Sawin, Jennie Amelia, acknowledgment 

to, viii 
Sawyer, Amos, 36 
Schaeffer, Anne Finney (Holton) Dana, 

wife of Henry, 72, 73; founds Dana 

Scholarship, 428 

Henry, 72 

Schenck, Maj.-Gen. Robert Cumming, 82 
Scholarships and prizes founded by, or in 

memory of, members of the Class of 

1852, 428-430 
School of Mines, 429 
Scintilla, A, poem written at time of Pres. 

Sparks's inauguration, 427 
Scott, Abram M., 245 
Guignard, son of John Alexander, 

sketch of, 244; membership of, in col- 
lege societies, 349, 385 
— — John Alexander, son of Abram M., 

244 
Sarah Slam (Guignard), wife of 

John Alexander, 244 
Sears, Dr. Barnas, 211 
Clara Endicott, daughter of Knyvet 

Winthrop, 159 

David (1807), 158 

Knyvet Winthrop, son of David, 

sketch of, 158-159; membership of, in 

college societies, 368, 400 
Mary C. (Peabody), wife of Knyvet 

Winthrop, 158, 159; contributes to 

publication of this volume, xv 
Mary Peabody, daughter of Knyvet 

Winthrop. See Shaw 
Miriam Clark, wife of David, 158 



Sears, Philip Howes (1844), 367, 38671 
Secchi de Casali, Giovanni F., furnishes 

material for H. Alger's "Phil the Fid- 
dler," 8 
Senior year, members who joined the 

class in the, 259 
Shattuck, Dr. George Cheyne (183 1), 25, 

25 n 

George Otis (1851), 180 

Shaw, Francis (1875), 159 

Mary Peabody (Sears), wife of 

Francis, 159 
Samuel Savage (1853), 78 n, 190, 

19071, 191 
Sheldon, David Sylvester, 227, 227 n 
Shepherd, Resin D., 27 
Sherman, Gen. William Tecumseh, 247 
Shields, Sarah Elizabeth (Whitfield), 

wife of William, 84 

William, 84 

Shipman, William D., 59 

Shurtleff, Nathaniel Bradstreet (1859), 

. 2 47 

Silsbee, Elizabeth White, daughter of 
Nathaniel Devereux. See Mont- 
gomery 

George Devereux, son of Nathaniel 

Devereux,. 160 

Marianne Cabot (Devereux), wife 

of Nathaniel (1824), 159 

Mary Stone (Hodges), wife of Nath- 
aniel Devereux, 160 

Nathaniel (1824), 159 

Nathaniel, son of Nathaniel Dev- 
ereux, 160 

Nathaniel Devereux, son of 

Nathaniel (1824); sketch of, 159-162; 
membership of, in college societies, 367, 
38S. 400 

Rosamond Devereux, daughter of 

Nathaniel Devereux, 160 

Skinner, Aaron Nichols, 82 

Skoda, Dr., 129 

Smith, Duncan, 59 n 

Elbridge, 33 

Elizabeth Williams (Bradlee), wife 

of Walter Clark, 25 

Joshua B., caterer, 307, 406 

Justus (1851), active in forming 

chapter of Psi Upsilon at Harvard, 398 

Walter Clark, 25 

Societies, College, 346-401 

Sohier, Elizabeth Amory (Dexter), wife 
of William Davies, 161 

George Brimmer, son of William 

Davies, sketch of, 161-162; mem- 
bership of, in college societies, 368, 
400; prize founded in memory of, 428 

■ Georgianna, entertainment by, 368; 

lessons by, 369 

William Davies (1805), 161 



450 



Index 



Somerby, Gustavus Adolphus, 236 

Sophocles, Evangelinus Apostolides, 27, 
27 n, 322, 325, 330, 354. 3S4«, 366, 
387, 387 n 

Sophomore year, members who joined the 
class in the, 259 

South America, exploring trip in, 135 

Southmayd, Charles F., 49 

Sparks, Jared (1815), President of Har- 
vard College, 26, 26 n, 190, 334, 363, 
363 n, 366, 416, inauguration of, 287, 
422-427; character and influence of, 
321-322; tribute to, 354 

Mary Crowninshield, 306, 307; ode 

by, to Class of 1852, 306, 306 n 

Spencer, Almon, son of Brainard; sketch 
of, 162-164 

Almon Edwin, son of Almon, 163, 

163 11 

Amy (Cannon), wife of Brainard, 162 

■ Anna Caroline, daughter of Almon, 

163 

Brainard, 162 

Elizabeth Nail, daughter of Almon, 

163 

Jane Hoge (Nail), wife of Almon, 

163, 164 

Robert Brainard, son of Almon, 163 

Sprague, Dr. Francis Peleg, 129 

Joseph E (1804), 164, 164 n 

Joseph White, son of Joseph E, 

20, 127, 167, 271, 401 n; sketch of, 164- 
166; membership of, in college societies, 

349, 367, 38S, 401 
Sarah L. (Bailey), wife of Joseph E, 

164 
Stanford, Jane, wife of Leland, J. H. 

Choate's defence of, 50 
Stanwood, Joseph, 42 
Louisa Ayer (Perkins), wife of 

Joseph, 42 
Starvation Hollow, term applied to College 

Commous, 329 n 
Statue of Liberty, New York Harbor, 80 
Stearns, Joseph Sprague (1804), son of 

Dr. William. See Sprague, Joseph E 

Dr. William, 164 n 

Stedrhan, Alice, daughter of Dr. Charles 

Ellery, 172 
Dr. Charges Ellery, son of Dr. 

Charles Harrison, 70, 98, 128, 160, 188, 

201, 214, 332, 335, 336, 365; sketch of, 

167-172; membership of, in college 

societies, 349, 367, 368, 385, 392, 401 

Dr. Charles Harrison, 167 

Edith, daughter of Dr. Charles 

Ellery. See Dana 
Edith Ellen (Parker), wife of Dr. 

Charles Ellery, 168, 17 1 
Ellery, son of Dr. Charles Ellery, 

169, 172 



Sterling, Frederick, 49 
Stevens, Asa, 109 

Hannah (Larrabee), wife of Asa, 109 

Stickney, Alice Martin, daughter of 

Charles Henry (1852), 246 
— Ann (Frazier), wife of Jeremiah 

Chaplin, 245 
Anne Elizabeth, daughter of Charles 

Henry (1852). See Graves 
■ Austin, 167; sketch of, 172-174; 

membership of, in college societies, 397, 

398 
Charles Henry, son of Jeremiah 

Chaplin, sketch of, 245-246 
Charles Henry, son of Charles 

Henry (1852), 246 
Eliza Trumbull, daughter of 

Austin, 173 
Frank Chaplin, son of Charles 

Henry (1852), 246 
Frederick Austin, son of Charles 

Henry (1852), 246 
Harriet Champion (Trumbull), wife 

of Austin, 172 
Henry Austin (1900), son of Austin, 

174 

Jeremiah Chaplin (1824), 245 

Joseph Trumbull (1895), son of 

Austin, 173 
Lucy (Burgess), wife of William, 

172 
Lucy Madeline, daughter of Austin. 

See Mathewson 
Susan M. (Austin), wife of Charles 

Henry (1852), 245, 246 

William, 172 

Stone, Cara E. (Hanscom) Whiton, 

second wife of Henry, 247 
Garaphelia B. (Howard), first wife 

of Henry, 247 
Henry, son of Rev. Thomas Tread- 
well, 36, 190; sketch of, 246-248; mem- 
bership of, in college societies, 401 
Laura (Poor), wife of Rev. Thomas 

Treadwell, 246 

Rev. Thomas Treadwell, 246 

Stoughton, Lt.-Gov. William (1650), 

gives silver punch-bowls to Harvard 

College, 306 
Straus, Francis Howe, son of Michael, 

108 
Mary Ware (Howe), wife of 

Michael, 108 

Michael, 108 

Strauss, Edouard, 129 
Strong, William L., 13 

Sturgis, Capt. , 350, 350 n 

Edward (1890), son of Russell (1852), 

248 
James McCulloch (1896), son of 

Russell (1852), 248 



45 1 



Index 



Sturgis, Lucy Codman, daughter of Rus- 
sell (1852), 249 

Margaret (McCulloch), second wife 

of Russell (1852), 248 

Mary Greene (Hubbard), wife of 

Russell (1823), 248 

Richard Clipston (1881), son of 

Russell (1852), 248 

Russell (1823), 248 

Russell, son of Russell (1823), 

205, 213; sketch of, 248-249 

Russell (1878), son of Russell (1852), 



[1890), 



of 



Sullivan Warren 

Russell (1852), 248 
Susan Welles, daughter of Russell 

(1852), 248 
Susan (Welles), first wife of Russell 

(1852), 248 
William Codman (1884), son of 

Russell (1852), 248 
Sturgis-Hooper Professorship of Geology, 

429 
Sullivan, Yankee, prizefighter, 353, 353 n 
Sumner, Charles (1830), 68, 324 
Sunday observance at Harvard and 

Amherst, 331 
Sweetser, Theodore H., 236 
Swift, Elijah, son of Oliver C, 306; 

sketch of, 174-176; membership of, in 

college societies, 367, 385 
Elijah Kent, son of Elijah, 175, 176; 

contributes to publication of this 

volume, xv 
Eliza Robinson, daughter of Elijah. 

See Chute 
Eliza Robinson (Jenkins), wife of 

Oliver C, 174 
Fannie (Wetherbee), second wife of 

Elijah, 176 
Myra (Bliss), first wife of Elijah, 

175, 176 

Oliver C, 174 

Oliver Franklin, son of Elijah, 175 



T; 



AFT'S Tavern, Boston, early name 
of Young's Hotel, 420 n 

Tammany Hall, action of, in 1879, 13 

Taylor, Samuel Harvey, 19 

Taylor &'Company, 71 

Temporary members of the class, list of, 
2; sketches of, 233-249 

Terry, Mr. , 166 

Terry, Mrs. , 165 

Thaxter, Adam W., 176 

Adam Wallace, son of Adam W., 

2 3) 3 2 3> 33 2 5 sketch of, 176-177; mem- 
bership of, in college societies, 369; 
poem by, 370-384; odes by, 405, 407, 
411,412 



Thaxter, Charlotte (Goff), wife of Adam 
W., 176 

Mary E. (Hill), wife of Adam 

Wallace, 177 

Thayer, Abijah Wyman, 178 

Ezra Ripley (1888), son of James 

Bradley, 182 

Gideon French (A 1855), 36, 64, 

74, 74 n 

James Bradley, son of Abijah 

Wyman, 69, 150, 187, 196, 222, 224, 
22 7> 335> 336; sketch of, 178-183; 
tribute of, to D. E. Ware, 199-200; to 
S. Willard, 218; his Class Day oration, 
276-294, 306; LL.D. from Harvard, 
338; membership of, in college societies, 
34 6 , 367, 368, 385, 395, 401; receives 
gift from Pres. Everett, for purchase of 
an overcoat, and later proposes perpet- 
ual transmission of such a gift, 430-431 

Pauline (Revere), second wife of 

Nathaniel (1871), 154; contributes to 
publication of this volume, xv 

■ Sarah Bradford, daughter of James 

Bradley. See Ames 

Sophia (Ripley), wife of James 

Bradley, 180 

■ Susan (Bradley), wife of Abijah 

Wyman, 178 

Theodora, daughter of James Brad- 
ley, 182 

William, son of Abijah Wyman, 179 

Dr. William Sydney (1885), son of 

James Bradley, 182 

Thomas, Dr. Alexander (1822), 183, 184; 
founds Gorham Thomas Scholarship, 
428 

Elizabeth Malcolm (Rand), wife of 

Dr. Alexander, 183 

Maj.-Gen. George Henry, 36, 247 

■ Gorham, son of Dr. Alexander, 

sketch of, 183-184; scholarship founded 
in memory of, 428 

Thorndike, Albert, 184 

■ Albert (1881), son of Samuel 

Lothrop, 187 

Joanna Batchelder (Lovett), wife of 

Albert, 184 

Alary Duncan, daughter of Samuel 

Lothrop. See Fiske 

Rosanna Langdon (Wells), wife of 

Samuel Lothrop, 185, 187 

Samuel Lothrop, son of Albert, 

3, 69, 70, 71, 87, 104, 106 n, 142, 150, 
160, 197, 224, 338, 421; sketch of, 184- 
187; membership of, in college societies, 
349, 367, 368, 384, 385, 395. 399, 4°°, 
401 

■ Sturgis Hooper (1890), son of Samuel 

Lothrop, 106, 187 

Ticknor, George, 68 



45 2 



Index 



Ticknor family, 190, 190 11, 191 

Tower, David Bates, 92 

■ Deborah Taylor (Pearce), wife of 

Reuben, 249 
De Witt Clinton (1842), son of 

Reuben, 249 n 

Francis Marion (1847), 390 

James Monroe (1844), son of 

Reuben, 249 n 

Reuben, 249, 249 n 

Reuben, son of Reuben; sketch of, 

249 
Townsend, S. P., quack doctor, 383, 383 n 
Train, Charles Russell, 115 
Transmittendum, 430-431 
Tremont Medical School, establishment 

of, 128 
Trimble, David Churchman, son of 

Gen. Isaac Ridgeway, 119, 306, 336; 

sketch of, 188-189; membership of, in 

college societies, 367, 368, 385 

■ Gen. Isaac Ridgeway, 188, 188 n 

- Dr. Isaac Ridgeway, son of David 

Churchman, 189 
Maria C. (Presstman), wife of Gen. 

Isaac Ridgeway, 188 
Sally Scott (Lloyd), wife of David 

Churchman, 188, 189 
Trousseau, Armand, 128, 129 
Trumbull, David, son of Gov. Jonathan, 

172 n 

Henry Champion, 172 

Jonathan (1727), Governor of Con- 
necticut, 172 
Joseph, Governor of Connecticut, 

son of David, 172, 172 n 

- Sarah (Backus), wife of David, 172 n 

Sarah Jane (Whittlesey), wife of 

Henry Champion, 172 
Tuttle, Julius Herbert, acknowledgment 

to, viii 
Tweed Ring, overthrow of, 12, 50 



V, 



U 



WDERWOOD, Judge , 156 

Upham, Charles Wentworth (1821), 189 

Charles Wentworth, son of 

Charles Wentworth, 61, 160, 189, 346, 
412; quoted, on W. S. Hooper, 104; 
sketch of, 189-193; suggests having 
class pictures, 272; Class Day chief 
marshall, 306; membership of, in 
college societies, 367, 368, 369, 385, 

393, 401 
Mary Ann (Holmes), wife of Charles 

Wentworth (1821), 189 
Mary (Haven), wife of Charles 

Wentworth (1852), 192 
Upton, Edgar Wood, 116 
Sarah Page (King), wife of Edgar 

Wood, 116 



AN BRUNT, Henry (1854), 206 
Van Buren, Martin, President, 208 
Vane, Gov. Sir Henry, 127 n 
Velpeau, Alfred, 128 
Vinal, Abigail Greenleaf (Aubin), wife 

of Charles Carroll, 193 
Annie Gore, daughter of Charles 

Carroll, 193 

Charles, 193 

Charles Carroll, son of Charles, 

7; sketch of, 193-194 
Elizabeth Kimball (Beale), wife of 

Charles, 193 
Mary Aubin, daughter of Charles 

Carroll, 193 



W; 



ADSWORTH, Rev. Benjamin 
(1690), President of Harvard College, 

' 43" 

Wadsworth House, 327 
Walker, Rev. James (1814), President of 

Harvard College, 22, 26, 26 n, 133 n, 

306, 425 
Wallace, James, 194 
John Benton, son of Rev. John 

Singer, 195 
Rev. John Singer, son of James, 

91, 330; sketch of, 194-196 
Margaret (Chambers), wife of 

James, 194 
Mary Diana Allmand, daughter of 

Rev. John Singer. See Dillman 
Mary Diana (Allmand), wife of 

Rev. John Singer, 195 
Ware, Adelaide Frances (Dickey), wife 

of Darwin Erastus, 199, 200 
Clarissa Dillaway (Wardwell), wife 

of Erastus, 196 
Darwin Erastus, son of Erastus, 

49. 57. 66 > ISO, 184, 190, 205, 321, 335, 

365, 391, 399; sketch of, 196-200; mem- 
bership of, in college societies, 346, 367, 

368, 385, 39s, 399 

Erastus, 196 

Erastus Davis, 196 

Helen (Lincoln), wife of Dr. John, 

200 

Rev. Henry (1812), 204 

Dr. John (1813), 200 

Mary Lovell (Pickard), wife of Rev. 

Henry, 204, 205 
Richard Darwin (1890), son of 

Darwin Erastus, 199, 200 
Dr. Robert, son of Dr. John, 34, 

US, 335, 336, 365; sketch of, 200-204; 

membership of, in college societies, 349, 

367, 368, 385, 392, 393, 394, 401 
William Robert, son of Rev. 

Henry, 127, 150, 208, 208 n, 213, 222, 



453 



Index 



336, 365, 421; sketch of, 204-207; ex- 
tract from letter of, 321-322; member- 
ship of, in college societies, 346, 348, 
349. 367, 368, 395, 401 

Waring, Anna Mary (Leeds), second wife 
of William Henry, 210 

Charlotte Hackstaff, daughter of 

William Henry, 210 

Clara, daughter of William Henry, 

210 

Clara Anne (Hackstaff), wife of 

Nathaniel Ferris, 207 

Eliza Hackstaff, daughter of 

Nathaniel Ferris, 122, 123, 123 n 

Henry, 207 

Henry Ferris, son of William Henry, 

210 

Horace Coolidge, son of William 

Henry, 210 

James Duncan, son of William 

Henry, 210 

John Hallock, son of William 

Henry, 210 

Kate (Bernard), first wife of William 

Henry, 208, 210 

Mary Kimberley, daughter of 

William Henry, 210, 210 n 

Nathaniel Ferris, 122, 207 

Wallace Catlin, son of William 

Henry, 210 

William Bernard (1882), son of 

William Henry, 208, 210 

William Henry, son of Nathaniel 

Ferris, 65, 120, 121, 122, 124, 205, 222, 
335, 336; sketch of, 207-210; member- 
ship of, in college societies, 346, 367, 
368, 385 

Warren, Dr. John Collins (1863), ac- 
knowledgment to, 43 n 

Dr. Jonathan Mason (m 1832), 17, 

131,133 
Washburn, Andrew, son of Joshua, 

sketch of, 210-212; membership of, in 

college societies, 367 
Eliza (Gardner), wife of Andrew, 

211, 212 

Gardner, son of Andrew, 211, 212 

Joshua, 210 

Mary, daughter of Andrew, 212 

Sylvia (Mosman), wife of Joshua, 

210 
Washington, Gen. George, 361 
Wasson, Rev. David Atwood, 97 n 
Water Celebration, Boston, 1846, 286, 

402-404 
Watts & Peabody, lawyers, 74 
Webb, George James, has charge of music 

at inauguration of Pres. Sparks, 425, 

426 
Weeks, Eunice Maria (Faxon), wife of 

William A., 66 



Weeks, William A., 66 

Welch, Francis, 16 

Wellington, Dr. Timothy (1806), 214 

Wells, Daniel, 185 

Wetherbee, Cornelia, wife of Francis, 176 

Francis, 176 

Wetmore & Browne, lawyers, 207 
Wheeler, Ada Maria, daughter of William 

Fiske, 213 
Adaline Berry (Young), first wife of 

William Fiske, 213 
Almira Warner (Allen), wife of 

William Augustus, 212 
Clara M. (Blunt), second wife of 

William Fiske, 213 
Frank Allen, son of William Fiske, 

213 

Josiah, 240 

William Augustus, 212 

William Fiske, son of William 

Augustus, 271; sketch of, 212-213; 

membership of, in college societies, 

349, 367, 385, 401 
Wheelwright, Henry Blatchford (1844), 

101, 221 
Whipple, John A., photographer, takes 

class pictures, 272 
White, Dr. James Clarke (1853), 129, 

321, 371 n; quoted, on Medical School 

Commencement, 1855, 133 n 

Thomas Wells (1759), 85 

Whiteside, Adeline (Cheever), wife of 

Dr. George Shattuck, 46 

Dr. George Shattuck, 46 

Whiting, Hattie M. (Gregory), wife of 

Julius, 91 

Julius, 91 

Whitman, Edmund Burke (1838), 85, 85 n 
Whitney, Rev. Frederick Augustus 

(1833), 22 

William Collins, 13 

Whiton, James Morris, 347 

Whittemore, Amos, 214 

Caroline (Tufts), wife of Gershom, 

213 
Edward Horatio, son of Dr. Horatio 

Hancock Fiske, 215 
Evelyn H. (Pratt), wife of Dr. 

Horatio Hancock Fiske, 214, 215 

Gershom, son of Amos, 213 

Horace Oscar (1853), 348 

Dr. Horatio Hancock Fiske, son 

of Gershom, 34, 201, 205; sketch of, 

213-215; membership of, in college 

societies, 385, 392, 393, 394, 397, 398, 

401 
Mary Caroline, daughter of Dr. 

Horatio Hancock Fiske, 215 
Whittier, John Greenleaf, 107 n 
Willard, Rev. Joseph (1765), President of 

Harvard College, 215 



454 



Index 



Willard, Joseph (1816), son of Rev. 
Joseph, 215 

Sarah Ripley (Fiske), wife of 

Sidney, 217 

• Sidney, son of Joseph (1816), 74, 

271, 398 n; sketch of, 215-219; in first 
Harvard- Yale regatta, 347, 348; mem- 
bership of, in college societies, 398 

Susannah Hickling (Lewis), wife of 

Joseph (1816), 215 

Willey, Tolman, 180 

Williams, Halbert Hudson, son of Russell 
Mortimer, 220, 221 

Harriet (Delano), wife of S. H., 219 

Kathryn Leslie, daughter of Russell 

Mortimer, 220, 221 

■ Russell Mortimer, son of S. H., 

sketch of, 219-221 

S. H., 219 

Sophia Harriet (Pitner), wife of 

Russell Mortimer, 220, 221 

Williamson, Caroline (Cross), wife of 
Joseph (U. of V. 1812), 221, 222 

■ Grace, daughter of William Cross. 

See Edes 

Joseph (Bowdoin 1849), son of 

Joseph (U. of V. 1812), 225 

Joseph (U. of V. 1812), 221, 221 n 

Sarah Howland (Ricketson), wife of 

William Cross, 223, 224, 225; provides 
for founding of a scholarship in memory 
of her husband, 429 

William Cross, son of Joseph (U. 

of V. 1812), 54 n, 65, 69, 121, 124, 125- 
126, 127, 150, 168, 190, 201, 202, 205, 



272, 332, 33s, 336, 420, 421; sketch of, 
221-225; tribute of, to J. B. Thayer, 
183; his Class Day poem, 295-305; ode 
by, 365-367; membership of, in college 
societies, 346, 349, 367, 368, 385, 392, 
395. 398, 4°i; songby, 413; poem by, 
414-416; scholarship in memory of, 
provided for, 429 

Wilson, James, 99 

Winchester, Rev. Elhanan, 103 

Winlock, Joseph, 230 

Winship, George Parker (1893), acknowl- 
edgment to, vii 

Winslow, Mary (Haley), wife of Elisha 
D., 22 

Winthrop House, Boston, 407, 407 n 

Wood, Amos, 240 

Louise (Wellington), wife of Amos, 

240 

Wright, Ansel, 225, 229 

Chauncey, son of Ansel, 42, 58, 93, 

179, 272; letters of, edited by J. B. 
Thayer, 181; sketch of, 225-232; mem- 
bership of, in college societies, 367, 368, 

395> 401 
Elizabeth (Boleyn), wife of Ansel, 

227, 227 n 
Wyman, Dr. Jeffries (1833), 135 



V 



OUNG, Adaline (Berry), wife of Cal- 
vin, 213 

— Calvin, 213 

— George, 420 n 



455 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

029 911 257 3 




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